Steve R blog

Are You Surprised?

The following story might amuse you, as it did me; it concerns an animal that can predict the weather, among other things which are apparently ‘surprising’. It can be found by hitting this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_8499000/8499524.stm

Now, is it just me, or is it slightly silly to think that animals have only just learned to predict the weather? After all, they do happen to spend 100% of their time out in it, do they not? I once spent ten hours locked out of my house in real distress; during that time I learned many things about my environment (most of which I didn’t want to know and concerned my neighbours)—multiply that by a million years or so and I’m sure that predicting the weather is just the tip of the iceberg!

There is, as it happens, a long and well documented history of animals predicting the weather and other such things we would label improbable: some varieties of snake, for example, are known to repeatedly bang their heads on rocks when it is about to rain very heavily. And fish, where to begin with fish? When the Tsunami rocked Thailand a while ago, there was not a fish to be found anywhere. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that they noticed a great and disastrous change in their environment and speeded to safety well in advance of any sign predicted by a human being.

And what about birds? You must have heard them, squawking away just before a storm lashes down. Who knows to what depths their instincts discern the changes in the environment? Maybe that will be the greatest knowledge the human race ever beholds: to be able to read the minds of animals. Though I fear that should that ever be the case, the information we receive may not be too kind to our destructive species–