Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

How do dogs sense earthquakes?A quick Google search says that we don't know. Any ideas?Edited by Percy, : No reason given.

I think there are at least 2 different phenomena involved here. There is a common belief that animals frequently undergo changes in behaviour days before an earthquake is due to hit. This is a poorly understood and possibly not even genuine phenomenon, it has plenty of anecdotal evidence but little hard evidence. I don't want to be too much of a well poisoner but one of the primary proponents of this phenomenon is Rupert Sheldrake, who has a number of batty ideas about animals and their apparently paranormal abilities.The other is what we see in the video, this dog isn't reacting to the quake days in advance but only seconds. I think this sort of response is possibly adequately explained by the idea of some animals having a broader range of hearing than humans and being able to detect the infrasound that accompanies the earthquake.As you say though there is no definite mechanism known, just a few competing theories.TTFN,WK

While I am intrigued by the subject, was it really necessary to post this again twice?

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I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Could you post the question again? I don't think 3 times is enough.

I don't think that the dog sensed any earthquakes. I believe since it was laying on the floor, it felt the seismic shift before the people sitting in chairs acting as a temporary shock absorber.As for things hurricanes or tornado's I believe that certain animals are able to feel the change in barometric pressure slightly more quickly than humans.I don't think there is much beyond that.

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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

I remember the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis writing somewhere that Christianity, or perhaps theism in general, could only be justified by actually being true and that if it wasn't no amount of appeals to social utility would excuse it. Can anyone identify the quote?Thanks.

Hi Percy, They can hear it 4 times further away than humans and they also feel the vibrations of earthquakes as well as airplanes flying overhead.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

I don't know about dogs, but the aliens seem to have installed a small earthquake detector in me.Every time there's an earthquake when I'm asleep, I seem to wake up about 10 seconds before it happens wondering, "What am I doing awake?"(*rumble!*)Oh. Great. Now the cat is accusing me of making the bed shake.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Unfortunately, you completely forgot to say how you know this. Which makes your assertions on this topic as worthless and useless as your assertions on every other topic.

One of my favorite lines is from my second favorite movie (series )of all time 'East of Eden' with Jane Seymore and Timothy Bottoms.When she asks the sheriff, "why do you think my husband didnt turn me in after I shot him, to get away" He responds by saying "i dont know, WHY DOES A DOG EAT DIRT, I have no idea"I laugh everytime I hear that line.Oh by the way my favorite Movie (series), 'The Awakening Land', with Hal Holbrook and Elizebeth Montgomery.Best Movie I ever experiencedGood to see you back in action again ICANTEAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.

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I was a Police dog trainer in the service for many years and Behavioralist say they sense it the same way they sense a Epileptic seizure. they sense the chemical reactions produced by biological changes. In this way they can move in front of the person, sit down in fron of them and let them know they are getting ready to have seizureICANT is essentially correct, the way they train dogs to sense sezures is simply amazing.I have been doing it so long I am able to notice my personal dogs reactions to things. We use to get hit in the back of the head with things by the instructor, when it was obvious we werent watching our dogs reactions. Number one rule WATCH YOU DOGexample many years ago while transporting my Shelty around here and there, I noticed him always smelling a specifc spot on my leg. My imagination got to work and sure enough when I went to the doctor he said there is enough blockage there for the dog to react to it as something different than normal.On the other hand I have a Chawinnie and Beagle that are a simply blockheads, but they make up for it being more personable than the sheltyHere is simple test you can do at your home to make you more aware of your dogs ablities and reactions. In your living room introduce a small package into the room, say the size of your hand, with a common and not to strong of an odor, place in the middle of the coffee table around some other stuff or beside it.Do all of this without the dog in the room, then bring the dog in casually and naturally and watch how quickly he moves directly twords it or when he or she walks past it , notice thier head turn slightly or quickly to go back to that new odor. this is called Casting. Then the dog will either go directly to it or move to one or the other side of it until it pinnpoints it, thats called Just Noticable difference and Saturation PointThey essentially have stored every single odor in the room already in thier mind and they see (smell) that new odor.you know what they say, if you cannot get an alarm system, get a small breed dog.I have put a many of drug users in prison using thier skills. We use to put controlled substances inside the middle of coffee cans and laundy boxes and they had no problem identifying the source or the odor.Its hard to believe a deers sense of smell is even greater than a dogs. Perhaps its because they have a bigger nose. Ya think?Speaking of the completely wierd, many years ago i was sitting in front of the idiot box, watching a program and the dog was laying between myself and the TV and all of the sudden there was a low but noticable growl that seemed to be coming from the TV area, so my first response was that it was off of the program, but nothing in the context of the program would be consistent with that noise.So Igot up looked outside, because sounds outside can often seem to be inside, still nothing, no movement or people making noises, so I went to the next room, because sounds from another room can often seem as if they are in your room, still nothing,Thinking nothing of it I sat back down in front of the TV as most guys would, I mean what else is there to do right A couple of seconds later, the same growl occured again, this time more noticable and distinct and it was obvious it wanst coming from the TV, but directly in front of me. Before this happened however the dog sat up as if he noticed something before the noise actually occuredSo much so this time my dog got up and growled back at it. It wierded me out and I am certain it was nothing that could not be naturally explained. never heard it again and dont know what it was. And no, I dont believe in any thing out of the ordinary in that sense, just relaying another dog storywatch your dogs reactions when thery are laying around the house, they are usually pretty reliable in letting you know about things before hand.Now cats on the other hand appear to be completely stupid or very intelligent. have you ever watched the cat that was sitting in one room and for no obvious reason he has to very quickly and nearly violently be in the next room for some reason. however when you go see what the excitement was all about, he is just sitting in t he middle of the room doing nothing, but he had to be there very quickly for no obvious reason. Go figureEAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.

This might be a suitable venue for you to pose your primordial soup question, provided you don't want to discuss the answers.TTFN,WK

Oh wow, thank you. I appreciate it. I'll repeat the question below:My friend says the primordial soup, the soup that from where all life came from, is nothing more than myth. He says it's a myth because the odds of such a primordial soup are astronomical to make it completely impossible for life to form from it, and therefore, the primordial Soup is a myth.Is he correct?Edit: often I do want to discuss thing, but i simply lack the capacity to.Edited by Tram law, : No reason given.

Yes and no.The so-called "primordial soup" is just an oversimplification of the process by which abiogenesis is hypothesized to have occured. It's accurate enough to get the basic idea, but loses accuracy in the details.Your friend is most definitely wrong about any estimation of probability. We don;t even know yet all of the conditions required for abiogenesis - it's impossible to estimate the probability of conditions you can't even yet fully define. That's something like estimating the probability of a dice roll when you don't know how many dice are being rolled or how many sides each die has.We do know some of the basics, at least, and nature has already shown us that some of the prerequisites for life do occur naturally in a lifeless environment. The moon Titan, for example, is covered in organic compounds, like natural gas and methane - there are literal oceans of the stuff. We know that water occurs naturally, of course, being the second most prevalent molecule in the known Universe (after Hydrogen). We know that planets do occur in the "habitable" zone, where liquid water exists naturally (Earth being the obvious example). The "building blocks," the general ones that we know are necessary (though not yet all of the specifics, since we haven't yet fully unraveled the process), are all there, as known observed facts in nature.The "primordial soup" term evokes imagery of a bubbling puddle of magic pre-life goo, out of which (perhaps after a dramatic lightning strike) life emerges. Again, it's an oversimplification. It correctly communicates that there must be a mixture of pre-biotic organic compounds...but one important detail is that abiogenesis doesn't have to happen in one dramatic moment, and the barrier between "not alive" and "alive" is pretty blurry.Current abiogenesis hypotheses suggest that pre-biotic organic compounds spontaneously self-assembled into self-replicating molecules. This sort of thing has been observed to happen in nature - just off the top of my head, prions (nasty little things, one sort of which is responsible for Mad Cow Disease) are basically proteins that cause other proteins to form into more prions (this being rather bad for the living thing that's using those proteins). They aren't alive, they aren't cells, they don't even have DNA or RNA, but they do replicate (I'm not suggesting that life arose from prions, just illustrating that abiotic self-assembly and self-replication does occur, and that the division between life and non-life isn't an easy-to-define line).The genesis of what we would call "life" was very likely a slow, incremental process, beginning with imperfectly self-replicating nonliving molecules, and "ends" with a primitive proto-cell.Your friend is both right and wrong - the "primordial soup" is a myth, but only in that it's a gross oversimplification of an extremely complex and not yet fully unraveled process.Your friend is completely and utterly wrong about the mathematics of probability, however. You can't estimate the probability of an event you can't even yet fully define.