Cat question

{CC}StealthBlue

United States41117 Posts

April 18 2008 14:55 GMT

So I just read and heard about the Earthquake in Illinois and I find it interesting that yesterday I had found my cat Mookie in the corner of the backyard highly agitated and constantly meowing his tail wasn't puffed up so I figured he wasn't chased by dogs. So I finally brought him in and he didn;t eat anything and just hid everywhere until finally sitting still in a chair and an occasional meow. Learned from my Gf that that he started meowing at 4am this morning according to Bloomberg the quake hit at 4:37 this morning.

Since then Mookie is back to normal.

Can animals from 6 hours away detect when things will happen like an Earthquake?

gusbear

333 Posts

April 18 2008 15:07 GMT

not earthquakes, scienists cant even give accurate quake forecasts. But animals may be able to forecast weather events like storms by sensing changes in pressure and temps etc (much like how humans can tell to a certain extent when a storm is brewing)

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction

Theres a section on animals, although I would rather count this as "pre-detection" instead of "prediction"

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0ONJfp95yoE

DwmC_Foefen

Belgium2186 Posts

April 18 2008 15:12 GMT

Bah why cant humans have all these traits? :p

But yeah it is said that animals can sense this stuff hours beforehand

minus_human

4784 Posts

April 18 2008 15:16 GMT

Well I am almost sure this is plausible, even though the distance seems so big.

Normally, if earthquakes start gradually, animals could surely sense the small imperceptible vibrations long before the large-scale vibrations would occur.

I really don't know anything about earthquakes, however I am guessing they affect quite a large area, and only the smaller zone right on top of the epicenter would really suffer relative damage.

Naib

Hungary4844 Posts

April 18 2008 15:40 GMT

On April 19 2008 00:12 DwmC_Foefen wrote:
Bah why cant humans have all these traits? :p

Because God picked Bloody Mess as a trait for us instead of this (shame on you if you don't get this sentence!).

omgbnetsux

United States3749 Posts

April 18 2008 15:52 GMT

On April 19 2008 00:40 Naib wrote:

Show nested quote +

Because God picked Bloody Mess as a trait for us instead of this (shame on you if you don't get this sentence!).

I was really hoping for the gigolo trait personally.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 16:09 GMT

Cats hear below 20 hz.
We don't hear below 20 hz.
Cats have better ear sensitivity.

Ez.

But in no way, in no twisted universe cats can "predict" earthquakes and do anything that proper equipment doesn't do better.

zer0das

United States8519 Posts

April 18 2008 16:30 GMT

That's assuming the sensitivity of the instrumentation is better than that of whatever mechanism animals use to detect earthquakes and that they are detecting the same thing. Some human made detectors rely on detecting the preceding wave before the shear wave messes up everything. If animals start acting strangely long before then, then they are probably detecting the same phenomena much faster or are detecting something else that precedes even the first wave.

Personally I think it's nonsense to think animals cannot detect earthquakes. There's enough cases of animals acting bonkers beforehand to demonstrate this fact. The Chinese have even used it to predict earthquakes.

6 hours is quite a distance away though. But I guess it could happen.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 16:56 GMT

Wake up.

Noone is saying that animals don't feel the initial effect of whatever phenomena better than humans do due to heightened senses. That is a known fact. The other known fact is that human-made tools can detect things like individual atoms and beyond. Yes, with a crappy seismograph that is older than dirt you might not be able to detect an incoming earthquake long beforehand. You also won't detect it if the operator is sleeping, drunk or playing blackjack with his coworkers. But saying that modern, properly operated equipment could be inferior to a cat is nonsense. The only thing of value in your post is that we really don't known the full earthquake mechanism, that is true. But whatever shape it manifests in, be it radiation, acoustic vibration or temperature fluctuations, we can measure all those things better than any animal in the world possibly can.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 17:27 GMT

#10

A fly can fly more effectively than any human-made robot of comparable size in the world. Any biological creature with legs can run faster than any artificial one. Most birds can fly in worse conditions than any artificial flier can deal with. A chameleon can stick flies faster than any computer. It's not just the "hardware." It's also the "software" and how you bring it all together.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 17:53 GMT

#11

FOR THE FUCK'S SAKE READ.

Not fly, not run, not stick flies. MEASURE.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 18:16 GMT

#12

It's conceivable that the cat can synthesize its measurements, or extract a signal from them, in a way scientists haven't yet learned how to do.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 18:21 GMT

#13

Oh my god.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 18:26 GMT

#14

Yes?

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 18:31 GMT

#15

Look, when a computer can't read

I find it hard to believe that computer analysis has managed to completely pawn all over biology.

omgbnetsux

United States3749 Posts

April 18 2008 18:41 GMT

#16

On April 19 2008 03:31 EmeraldSparks wrote:
Look, when a computer can't read

I find it hard to believe that computer analysis has managed to completely pawn all over biology.

CAPTCHA has actually been broken on a lot of sites.

XCetron

5226 Posts

April 18 2008 18:43 GMT

#17

because computer has no real intelligent as of yet, and also they're made by "biology" so their imperfections and flaws are only results of our own.

.MistiK

Netherlands347 Posts

April 18 2008 18:54 GMT

#18

On April 19 2008 02:53 BluzMan wrote:
FOR THE FUCK'S SAKE READ.

Not fly, not run, not stick flies. MEASURE.

hahahaha

you're my new favorite TLnet poster

man

United States272 Posts

April 18 2008 19:00 GMT

#19

37 mins before the quake? I highly doubt that.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 19:03 GMT

#20

You can always make a even more disgusting captcha. Add sparkles and multicolors and random shapes and lines and whatnot and what it takes millions of lines for computers to do you will *still* be able to do in in a few seconds.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 19:05 GMT

#21

Stop trying to impress me with your pseudoscientifical bullshit. I'm not impressed, I've read worse. Your fly sticking and pictures are fun, but that has nothing to do with earthquakes. Yes, creatures can interpret a variety of signals unreadable for machine (and not because it's impossible, noone just bothered to waste his time coding it, serious image processing will eat your pics for breakfast), but that is totally irrelevant. Those signals are man-made. Earthquakes don't generate pictures with distorted letters. Unless there's a dwarf underground with a signal emitter that sends encrypted transmissions of "run for your lives" cats have a natural decryptor for, there's nothing to talk about.

I am frustrated as I'm explaining obvious stuff. Please stop speaking on something that has zero relevance to the subject.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 19:22 GMT

#22

Unless you're going to assert that all natural signals can be read as plain as day, then whether the signal is artificial or not has no bearing on whether a signal that is hard to extract exists. It's separating the message from the noise, which must be done *whenever* you're trying to gain information from sensory measurements, whether the signal is clear or noisy. Nobody is arguing that earthquakes create distorted letter images (and I'm not sure why you're saying it,) but what it is saying is that computer analysis may not always be the best at finding the information that isn't readily obvious when analyzed certain ways.

What I'm saying is that it's frequently *hard* to extract information from a noisy signal, and it's possible that while a computer program isn't able to do said extraction, a cat might be able to.

Edited for civility.

Myrmidon

United States9452 Posts

April 18 2008 19:22 GMT

#23

I think the argument you want to be making is that we don't know completely what phenomena are good predictive indicators of coming earthquakes (i.e. not detecting the preliminary waves before the real quake, before that), whereas some of these phenomena related to earthquakes may agitate animals.

The issue is about discerning which information is useful and which is garbage, not whether or not animals can take measurements in any fashion better than the best machines.

edit: "noise" probably implies you know what kind of thing you're measuring and where you're measuring it but whatever

Well in any case after reading the thread now I have an image in my mind about cats internally performing FFTs.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 19:54 GMT

#24

We don't know, sure. But an earthquake singificantly manifesting itself in anything but acoustic oscillations or electromagnetic radiation (possible in a very weird scenario, but not likely) of whatever kind is highly unlikely. Natural chaotic process generating a high-complexity signal that behaves in a special way in terms of noise/signal separation is highly unlikely, they just don't behave this way. Cats developing a very complex decryption algorithm that surpasses whatever signal processing known to humans for no evolutionary reason (you're not gonna tell me that earthquakes were the most influencing survival factor for cats, right?) is highly unlikely. Anything is possible. Your fingers can tunnel through the keyboard, but it's highly unlikely, so it's not worth considering.

There's too many "highly unlikely"'s to make this discussion worthwhile. Yes, there have been "multiple reports" of it, like there have been multiple reports of UFO sightings, alien abduction, miraclous healing, resurrection and whatever other myths. Until someone conducts a scientific experiment that statistically proves (with a large sample size to cut away cats that are crazy, experience health issues and such) animals show weird behavior preceding earthquakes before any equipment shows any reliable data, this is all worth nothing.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 20:05 GMT

#25

The first one doesn't need to be true, the second one is misleading because it doesn't have to "behave a special way," so we're left with evolutionary significance... and a factor doesn't need to be the "most influencing" to affect evolution. Many features have developed which might seem to be very minor, but it's not like just because it's minor nature is going to ignore it. It's not especially unlikely that for animals dwelling on mountains, or perhaps underground or in caves or whatever, where seismic events are infrequent, that knowing when an earthquake was coming wouldn't have an effect.

It's misleading to characterize that level of "unlikely" as the likelihood that my fingers will tunnel through the keyboard.

Of course there have been no official studies, so if you're going to take that as your only measure of truth, then this among other things is worth nothing and the discussion can end. Just remember that studies are done because of hypotheses which people consider in the absence of conclusive evidence.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 20:28 GMT

#26

Please go learn signal/noise separation. To behave in a way that we can't separate it from noise but something else could, a signal (or noise) has to be a special case. As for the third point, just no. Complex stuff doesn't grow out of nowhere, at least it's highly unlikely.

There is no truth. There is reliable data and unreliable data. That data is unreliable.

EmeraldSparks

United States1451 Posts

April 18 2008 20:46 GMT

#27

This isn't about the reliability of the data, but the plausibility of the hypothesis based on limited observations. If somebody were to do a proper, "can animals predict earthquakes," study, you assert that it would be about as likely from him to receive evidence that animals can interpret their data to predict earthquakes better than humans, as for my hands to fall through my computer?

In terms of animal intelligence, it has to start from somewhere, which is ultimately in the beginning nwohere.

BluzMan

Russian Federation4235 Posts

April 18 2008 21:06 GMT

#28

Either noone bothered (low success expectancy - whoever studied the underlying data for this "hypothesis" didn't find such experiments worthwhile) or someone carried it out and found out nothing.

I admit I'm not a specialist on cat senses, but afaik it's official that cats can outhear human, but cannot outhear equipment. That is enough to explain most of the cases and the rest could be easily thrown out to exaggeration and errors (i.e. linking animal behavior to some event when in fact the owner just forgot to feed it). There's no reason to even start such a research.

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