Extra Sensory perception

Vibrations in the ground are a poorly understood but probably widespread means of communication between animals.

It seems Inflatable Tent unlikely that these animals could have detected seismic"pre-shocks" that were missed by the sensitive vibration-detecting equipment that clutters the world's earthquake laboratories. But it is possible. And the fact that many animal species behave strangely before other natural events such as storms, and that they have the ability to detect others of their species at distances which the familiar human senses could not manage, is well established. Such observations have led some to suggest that these animals have a kind of extra-sensory perception. What is more likely, though, is that they have an extra sense -- a form of perception that people lack. The best guess is that they can feel and understand vibrations that are transmitted through the ground.

Almost all the research done into animal signalling has been on sight, hearing and smell, because these are senses that people possess. Humans have no sense organs designed specifically to detect terrestrial vibrations. But, according to researchers who have been meeting in Chicago at a symposium of the society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, this anthropocentric approach has meant that interactions via vibrations of the ground(a means of communication known as seismic signalling) have been almost entirely over-looked. These researchers believe that such signals are far more common than biologists had realised -- and that they could explain a lot of otherwise inexplicable features of animal behaviour.

Whether any of this really has implications for such things as earthquake prediction is, of course, highly speculative. But it is a salutary reminder that the limitations of human senses can cause even competent scientists to overlook obvious lines of enquiry. Absence of evidence, it should always be remembered, is not evidence of absence.