Animal Magnetism

There was a series of small earthquakes this morning, emanating from the obscure suburb of Fontana. They barely registered 4 on the Richter, but I sensed at least one while lying in bed, around 6:30 AM. It was a very slight tremor, barely as substantial as my dog brushing against me, but enough to alert my seismic detectors. I guess they've been permanently instilled in my sensory consciousness like cookies from a website, ever since the harsh and abrupt Northridge quake of 1994 forever alerted me to the perils of living in this seismically active zone. I hope that they were minor rustlings of the jumbled strata, and not foreshocks to the Major Event that is inevitably going to hit, maybe sooner than previously fated because of the massive South Asia quake that, among other nasty accompishments, altered the Earth's orbit.

What surprised me somewhat this morning is that my dog Josie didn't seem to notice the temblor at all. Of course, sleeping is a major priority of hers, but one might expect a lower mammal to react more sensitively to subtle environmental changes, or what's the point to all those Urban legends (or Rural myths) about animals foretelling major quakes, and, most recently, of reacting sagely to the oncoming tsunamis by fleeing inland while the humans sat stupidly around waiting to be drowned en masse? Recent news reports, tiring of all the dreadful statistics, have sidebarred the story of animal survival as the feel-good angle of the catastrophe. Now the debate has begun as to how sensitive "lower" animals actually are, and whether their reactions to environmental cues represent innate sensitivities beyond human scope.

Supposedly in the mid-'70s the panic of animals inhabiting a Chinese city instigated an exodus that saved thousands of lives when an earthquake struck on cue. Conversely, no animal ruckus preceded a quake two years later in a nearby city that wiped out nearly half a million people, a mind-boggling event dwarfing even the recent tsunami in carnage. So what do the beasts know, and when do they know it?

I'm not sure whom to root for in this debate--the animal proponents or the skeptics, who claim that we can do as well if we just put our minds to it. Well, we haven't yet. Some animal behaviorists point out that animals are naturally very defensive, and will retreat in the face of any slight alteration of their environment. Perhaps so, but I don't know what those skeptics are afraid of, in conceding that other life forms have evolved their own survival instincts that don't include rational analysis. Don't birds have magnetically-charged regions in their brains that enable them to navigate? And what about bees, who can measure precisely how far a food source is based on its angle from the sun, and then dance about it to relay the information? Not only are we hopelessly arrogant as a species, but apparently jealous as well.

Not me. I'd be happy to attribute all sorts of mental and psychic talents to my pooch, if she ever bothered to show them. But Josie prefers to loll in her luxuriant stupidity and lift her radar sensors only in the direction of food and the Trespasser at the Front Door. She ignores earthquakes, lightning, vacuum cleaners and other fabled external threats. She is, however, sensitive to the dangers of other dogs--when a large mastiff named Jasmine who lives across the street emerges with her owner, even if we're a block away, Josie starts dragging me inisistently in the opposite direction, recalling that Jasmine once tried to bite her head off. Well, I would remember that, too.

But I do believe that there are sensitivities that animals have mastered that may be in the reptilian parts of our brains but have become vestigialized because of our dependence on rational thought. Not just the enhanced olfactory and aural abilities demonstrated by plain old Josie, who can sense a neighbor approaching ten seconds before I can. I also believe that they have advanced recognition abilities for such intangibles as emotions. I do not have to stare angrily or yell at Josie to alert her to my disfavor. There have been times when I've been watching a ballgame and silently registered disgust at an event, and Josie would suddenly leap from my lap and disappear into the bedroom as though I were angry at her. What makes her do that? Is there a subtle change in my blood pressure that she can detect? Possibly. But my theory, which I project science will verify some time this century, is that emotions generate actual energy that can be measured, like the electricity that emerges from brain activity or the eerie lights that constitute our personal auras. And I think dogs, and perhaps flies and horses and octopi ad infinitum, all are tuned into channels that have been blocked in our mental cable roster.