Animal Telepathy

[Maguspk]

So I'm watchign an interesting Animal Planet special called "Talking with Animals" or something like that. It's discussing the phenomena of animals being able to anticipate and even communicate/think telepathically.

The most interesting experiment done so far was when they took a parrot and it's owner who had reported the uncanny telepathic bond they share and placed them in seperate rooms more than 30 feet apart. They then had the woman think about pictures that she hadn't seen beforehand that were concealed in a manilla envelope. Out of like 40 pictures, her thoughts were able to effectively allow the parrot to speak on 23 of them. The chances of the parrot speaking about details in a picture, and doing it as she thought about it 23/40 times is ridiculously impossible. So you can't ignore the fact that there is telepathy going on.

A simple example of this phenomena is the fact that pets are able to sense when their owners or close family members are coming home or are nearby. This however can be argued to be due to a keen sense of hearing or smell; but then there are 10% of the 50% of these reports claim the animals are aware the said person is nearby more than 10 minutes beforehand. That's much too far to smell or hear through many different, distinct sounds.

The suggestion is that animals have evolved a sort of telepathic sense in order to survive in the wild. Which is interesting, because it leaves two topics for discussion and maybe more (which is why I bring it to this forum). I think maybe if you believe in evolution it would be interesting to question, why did we lose our sense of telepathy and other animals didn't? Also if you don't believe in evolution it's an edifying phenomena which gives evidence that we were uniquely created by an omnipotent God.

Discuss :D.

Edit: Video I found no youtube about 10 min long about the subject.. http://youtube.com/watch?v=tLgyFQZxs40

Edit: In the special on Animal Planet they gave example of horses and parrots and cats and such going wild before an earthquake as if they anticipated it. The horse owner made it a point to reiterate that all the while the pigs didn't do anything lol and just went about their daily routines, even during the earthquake. This is just further proof that pigs suck and should be killed for food. :D

[SilverBreeze]

There's also the whole bit about how Humans are currently only capable of using 10% of their brains, the people we usually refer to as being geniuses were found to use about 16-18% of theirs. Maybe if we evolve someday and are capable of using more of our brains, then we would be able to do telepathy as well, because speaking is a crappy means of communication.

[Kuya]

Actually I heard we use 10% of our brains during certain things, we use all of our brain, just not all at once, and hence then 10%.

Could be wrong.

And about us humans loosing telepathy, In my opinion it would hinder us more than help us, In a mental development sort of sense.

[Parshias]

There's also the whole bit about how Humans are currently only capable of using 10% of their brains, the people we usually refer to as being geniuses were found to use about 16-18% of theirs. Maybe if we evolve someday and are capable of using more of our brains, then we would be able to do telepathy as well, because speaking is a crappy means of communication.

Humans using only 10% of their brains in a myth. If we only used 10% of our brains, why would being shot in the head be fatal? Wouldn't the bullet hit the 90% of brain we don't use a decent amount of the time? And if we only use 10% of our brain, why do we still have that 90%?

[cassiraa]

Think of our brain as a PS3, What are thinking with is raw potential! Sure, we use all of our brain in some facet, The bullet logic doesn't work because getting shot involves percussive damage through the entire brain. People have been hit with arrows or such and even had to have entire parts of their frontal lobe removed and still survived.

The human mind is a powerful thing, From telepathy to telekinesis to buddist monks who can safely raise their own body temperature to lethal amounts through meditation.

[Maguspk]

The way everything works and the amazing control and hidden facets of almost everything that happens in the world truly is facinating.

The special is still on, geez this is going on for a long time but it's all so interesting! They had a story of a woman who had a dog who kept sniffing around at her ankles at a mole. She eventually, after 6 months had the mole checked and it turned out to be a malignant tumor. Stories like hers began to turn up more frequently. So they did an experiment in which they had 6 samples of human tissue, 1 of which was cancerous. The dogs were rewarded for finding the cancerous samples and can "sense" cancer.... so unreal.

The true test was when they had a sample they thought was cancer free and put it into the 6 sample mix. The dogs were being divided between the two cancerous samples. So they took out the one they thought was wrong into another room, but the dogs would stop at a wall and indicate they sensed the cancer nearby still. They had the sample's owner tested and he had kidney cancer and had it removed and was cured.

This is amazing...

[Demosthenes11]

Animal psychics are frauds, plain and simple. You are gullible as hell (or stupid) if you pay for someone to come tell you your dog is hungry or your cat feel neglected.

[Bwelch]

10%, myth? Ever hear of Scott Flansburg? The USA National Memory Championship? Why can some memorize and/or calculate hundreds of words and numbers yet others can't?

lolindigochildren.

[Kuya]

Copypasta coming up:

[edit] Popular misconceptions
The following are some commonly held misconceptions of the mind and brain perpetuated through urban legends, mass media, and the promotion of dubious products to consumers (Sala, 1999). A number of practitioners of pseudoscience, New Age philosophies, and mystical or occult practices are known to use some of these ideas as a part of their belief systems (also see popular psychology).

The human brain is firm and grey: The fresh/living brain is actually very soft, jelly-like and deep red. They do not become firm and grey until they have been preserved with various chemicals/resins.
Humans use only 10% or less of their brain: Even though many mysteries of brain function persist, every part of the brain has a known function.[5][6][7][8]
This misconception most likely arose from a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation in an advertisement) of neurological research in the late 1800s or early 1900s when researchers either discovered that only about 10% of the neurons in the brain are firing at any given time or announced that they had only mapped the functions of 10% of the brain up to that time (accounts differ on this point).
Another possible origin of the misconception is that only 10% of the cells in the brain are neurons; the rest are glial cells that, despite being involved in learning, do not function in the same way that neurons do.
If all of a person's neurons began firing at once he would not become smarter, but would instead suffer a seizure. In fact, studies have shown that the brains of more intelligent people are less active than the brains of less intelligent people when working on the same problems.
Some New Age proponents propagate this belief by asserting that the "unused" ninety percent of the human brain is capable of exhibiting psychic powers and can be trained to perform psychokinesis and extra-sensory perception.
A less literal interpretation of the statement is valid. It can be reasonably claimed that most people only use a very small fraction of the cognitive potential of their brain, even though all individual brain neurons are busily working. Various cultural inventions enable humans to better utilize their cognitive potential, such as reading, education, problem solving, critical thinking, etc.

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brai ... onceptions

Edit: Has references as well

[SilverBreeze]

There's also the whole bit about how Humans are currently only capable of using 10% of their brains, the people we usually refer to as being geniuses were found to use about 16-18% of theirs. Maybe if we evolve someday and are capable of using more of our brains, then we would be able to do telepathy as well, because speaking is a crappy means of communication.

Humans using only 10% of their brains in a myth. If we only used 10% of our brains, why would being shot in the head be fatal? Wouldn't the bullet hit the 90% of brain we don't use a decent amount of the time? And if we only use 10% of our brain, why do we still have that 90%?

You were saying?

[Mizango]

There's also the whole bit about how Humans are currently only capable of using 10% of their brains, the people we usually refer to as being geniuses were found to use about 16-18% of theirs. Maybe if we evolve someday and are capable of using more of our brains, then we would be able to do telepathy as well, because speaking is a crappy means of communication.

Humans using only 10% of their brains in a myth. If we only used 10% of our brains, why would being shot in the head be fatal? Wouldn't the bullet hit the 90% of brain we don't use a decent amount of the time?

I am guessing the fatal part probably comes from the gaping wound and the gentle sprinklings of grey matter from the said persons head. Those nasty little rifle shots to the head tend to bleed profusely from time to time. That is like saying just because a paraplegic is unable to use his/her extremities that bullets are rendered ineffective when fired into the unused, atrophied parts. That alone would render people like Stephen Hawking invincible!

Now thats just plain silly.


(LOL @ Smallville featuring Stephen Hawking)

[Devek]

My crackpot theory is that our brain doesn't actually do anything. It is just an antenna.

Might seem odd.. but consider driving a RC car around a caveman, they would think the car was self-controlled and wouldn't understand radio waves or how the car interacts with it.

We have preprogrammed mechanisms in our brain, like reactions to touching hot stuff.. but memory and conscious though is elsewhere.

I have no evidence to back this up, besides that the sheer amount of energy it would take to process the type of things our brain does would create enough heat to kill us. Just to process vision is an incredible task when you realize that our eyes only show us a tiny portion of what we actually see, most of what we see is interpolated and guessed by our brain.


Seems crazy... but not too long ago we thought the heart was the center of all thought.

[Kuya]

My crackpot theory is that our brain doesn't actually do anything. It is just an antenna.

Might seem odd.. but consider driving a RC car around a caveman, they would think the car was self-controlled and wouldn't understand radio waves or how the car interacts with it.

We have preprogrammed mechanisms in our brain, like reactions to touching hot stuff.. but memory and conscious though is elsewhere.

I have no evidence to back this up, besides that the sheer amount of energy it would take to process the type of things our brain does would create enough heat to kill us. Just to process vision is an incredible task when you realize that our eyes only show us a tiny portion of what we actually see, most of what we see is interpolated and guessed by our brain.


Seems crazy... but not too long ago we thought the heart was the center of all thought.

That is sorta what i think to, sorta like the body is a physical connection to this world while our minds/spirit/consciousness(sp) remain elsewhere. Its kinda pseudo science.

[jiang]

in reponse to the bit where you claim that animals can tell when their masters are coming home: animals, just like humans, have internal clocks. when you somehow wake up in the morning before your alarm clock goes off, an internal clock is telling you so; its probably more than likely that the instances where the animal 'predicted' the master is coming home is due to similiarities in the time frames that the master arrives at the house. on a daily schedule, you probably get off of work/school at around 3pm. the animal probably knows that around 3:30 or so that you're arriving home simply due to multiple occurences. animals aren't as stupid as people think, and calling it some kind of psychic power is silly. if you study psychology, the unique sound of your car's generator, (would could be heard by a dog from quite far away) could cause a conditional response in the pet to react to such.

there is no doubt that (certain) animals can sense things at a heightened level due to their brains being better equiped for such functions but calling them psychic phenomena is rediculous.

[Axil]

10%, myth? Ever hear of Scott Flansburg? The USA National Memory Championship? Why can some memorize and/or calculate hundreds of words and numbers yet others can't?

lolindigochildren.

Research how the brain of a Savant works, and youll get it
hint: our brains ar wired to filter things out everyday where as savants are incapable of doing that

[Devek]

When I was a kid I lived in a 2 story house and my parents would come home at odd hours.. anywhere from 6pm to 10pm.

They had a yorkie dog and it would rush to the store and get excited before you could even see their car comming around the corner.

It wasn't because he had an internal clock, quite the opposite I think dogs have no concept of time at all. Dogs just have noses that good, he could smell them from that sort of distance.

Dogs have insanely powerful noses.

They can wrap drugs in air tight containers, throw them in a tire and inflate it on a car.. and a dog will still smell the drugs inside.

We can't measure how good their nose is because we don't have any man made devices that can detect scents better than they can.

[Kaylia]

Anyone here ever studied physics or chemistry? I dont understand how people can swallow that telepathy bs.

Telepathy is by no mean a possible mean of telecomunication, and our brain can't send powerful electromagnetic wave that can be understood by other. Believe what you want about animal, but "telepathy" isnt the word that should be used.


Most of our brain isn't used simply because you need a ton of neurones to make it works efficiently. It's not like they were predetermined to learn something when they were created, or execute a particular task. Without that huge empty network at the start, you couldn't learn nearly as much or efficiently. So yeah, while there is a good amount of cell that wont be used, they are still needed indirectly

[Demosthenes11]

It wasn't because he had an internal clock, quite the opposite I think dogs have no concept of time at all. Dogs just have noses that good, he could smell them from that sort of distance.

You can't just DO that; say something isn't true without any sort of information. "Dave went to the store. Well obviously he didn't drive but he rode his bike." and then talking about his route on his bike to the store as if it is the only possible way he could have gotten there and then speaking as if the concluded route was a fact doesn't make any sense. I think all creatures MAY have an internal clock, just as we do. I don't get up at 5:59, one minute before my alarm goes off, because I smell my alarm about to ring lol

[Devek]

I can't really give any evidence that don't have internal clocks, they just don't seem to understand time is all. Like that dog would sit hours on the stairs waiting for my parents.. he didn't seem to know or care that he has been waiting for 3 hours, he just knows that he is waiting right now.

If YOUR clock always goes off at 6, than its possible you adjust to that internally.. But my parents didn't get home at 6.. they got home at 6, or 7, or 8, or 9.. or sometimes later. That dog would rush to the door almost 2 min before they got home and start sniffing it and get all excited and scratch it.. (which I used to my advantage by knowing they were almost here).

Maybe dogs have internal clocks, I don't know.. you can't really prove it either way. Their attitude is more in the moment and they don't behave in manners that suggest they are aware of the passing of time.

[Charla]

Actually psionics and stuff might not be impossible thanks to something called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement. Basically two particles can be connected over any distance, and the state of one will depend on the state of the other.

Also, there have been other experiments with results that can't be explained by any scientific theory. Here's one I remember: a psychic and a normal woman put their hands next to a vial of bacteria and chemicals that kill the bacteria. The psychic tries to make the bacteria survive by "praying" for them, and the other person just empties her mind. 50% of the bacteria in the psychic's vial survived, and 2% of the ones in the other vial survived.

Of course it could have been made up by someone. I'll go put on my tinfoil hat so the aliens can't remote control me anymore now.