Do Pets Have Psychic Abilities?
This article looks at the possibility that pets have ESP or telepathy.
There is an ongoing debate whether pets have psychic abilities. On one side are pet owners and those who are oriented towards the paranormal while on the other are skeptics and the scientifically-oriented. Author Rupert Sheldrake thinks that animals have abilities that people may have had long ago but have lost. Sheldrake has concluded that there are three major types of perceptiveness by animals:
- Telepathy: Some pets may have a psychic connection with their owners through links.
- Sense of Direction: This ability may account for the amazing journeys some animals make to return to their owners.
- Premonitions: Some animals seem to know when earthquakes, hurricanes or other disasters are about to happen.
In Sheldrake’s 1994 book, “Seven Experiments That Could Change the World”, he proposed testing the claim that pets can sense when their owners are coming home. Two Austrian film crews were sent to Ramsbottom, England. One was there to follow dog owner P. Smart and the other was there to follow her terrier Jaytee. After being gone for a few hours, the moment Smart decided to go home, Jaytee raced to the porch and waited there until she returned. However, when two researchers from the University of Hertfordshire retested Jaytee, the terrier failed four times to sense when Smart began coming home.
In the early 1950s, the US Army hired Dr. Joseph Rhine of Duke University to research ESP in dogs. Rhine was the first to try to investigate scientifically this type of paranormal phenomena. He carried out experiments using German shepherds to find landmines which resulted in promising results. However, the results also suggested that some of the findings were attributable to the extraordinary sense of smell possessed by dogs.
So, the debate continues. Researchers are still investigating the possibility that animals have psychic powers. The enhanced senses of smell and hearing may account for some of the alleged paranormal abilities of dog owners. However, as a dog owner, I believe that pets do seem to be able to sense things.
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