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blue jay
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 119
Location: Vancouver, formerly Osaka, Japan
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 Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:05 am Post subject: Animals survive tsunami, puzzle scientists |
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Animals survive tsunami, puzzle scientists
Associated Press
YALA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka � Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the tsunamis -- indicating that animals may have sensed the wave coming and fled to higher ground.
An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.
Floodwaters from Sunday's tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs -- one red car even ended up on top of a huge tree -- but the animals apparently were not harmed and may have sought out high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays ran a hotel in the park.
"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal," said Wijeyeratne, whose hotel in the park was destroyed.
"Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense," Wijeyeratne said.
Yala, Sri Lanka's largest wildlife reserve, is home to 200 Asian Elephants, crocodile, wild boar, water buffalo and gray langur monkeys. The park also has Asia's highest concentration of leopards. The Yala reserve covers 391 square miles, but only 56 square miles are open to tourists.
The human death toll in Sri Lanka surpassed 21,000. Forty foreigners were among 200 people in Yala who were killed.
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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I rather suspect it's because they can run or climb trees faster.
Having had to dive into the van and start up pronto to avoid being trampled by a herd of wild Sri Lankan elephants, I have great respect for the speed at which even clumsly non-humans can move. |
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Guy Courchesne
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
Posts: 9650
Location: Mexico City
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:15 pm Post subject: weird |
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You know, maybe all animals are supposed to have 6 senses. Just us humans that only have 5.
That or having four feet and no shoes means you feel it coming. |
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Twisting in the Wind
Joined: 20 Oct 2003
Posts: 571
Location: Purgatory
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Heard an animal expert on Larry King Live describe what happened. He feels that the fish noticed the earthquake first and began acting irregularly. The birds that eat the fish then started noticing the fish acting irregularly, and started themselves to act irregularly, which caused the animals to notice and decide something was up and run away. With all these animals acting "irregularly," I guess you could say they guessed there would be a whole lot of sh@@ coming down. Heh....heh.... |
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blue jay
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 119
Location: Vancouver, formerly Osaka, Japan
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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Heard an animal expert on Larry King Live describe what happened. He feels that the fish noticed the earthquake first and began acting irregularly. The birds that eat the fish then started noticing the fish acting irregularly, and started themselves to act irregularly, which caused the animals to notice and decide something was up and run away. With all these animals acting "irregularly," I guess you could say they guessed there would be a whole lot of sh@@ coming down. Heh....heh....
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I guess we should really pay more attention to animals' behaviors around us!
Here's another article: Did animals have quake warning?
By Sue Nelson BBC Science correspondent :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4136485.stm
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"Debbie Martyr, who works on a wild tiger conservation programme on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, one of the worst-hit areas in Sunday's disaster, said she was not surprised to hear there were no dead animals.
Wild animals in particular are extremely sensitive," she said.
"They've got extremely good hearing and they will probably have heard this flood coming in the distance.
"There would have been vibration and there may also have been changes in the air pressure which will have alerted animals and made them move to wherever they felt safer."
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In terms of paying more attention to animals, this is a good read about disappearing frogs:
Tracking the Vanishing Frogs: An Ecological Mystery
by Kathryn Phillips
Here are some links about her book:
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-0140246460-4
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0105/feature6/
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~gizmo/mark.html |
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moonraven
Joined: 24 Mar 2004
Posts: 3094
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| Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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Animals are still part of Nature. Their relationship to their surroundings is close and intense.
Our species, unfortunately, has tried to dominate Nature and to distance itself from the rest of the species.
Given this situation, when Nature strikes back--who are the logical victims? |
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