Welcome, loyal viewers to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the conclusion of our three-part interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.

Dr. Sheldrake is an expert in the study of animal behavior and one of the world’s most visionary and innovative biologists who has written more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including “The Presence of the Past,” “Other Unexplained Powers of Animals” and “The Rebirth of Nature.”

He studied biochemistry and other natural sciences at Cambridge University in England and philosophy at Harvard University in the United States, before returning to Cambridge for a PhD in biochemistry.

Dr. Sheldrake is a leading scientist in the investigation of animal psychic predictions and telepathic communication.

His research has shown that dogs can anticipate when their caregiver is coming home, when they are about to be fed, and when their human companion has decided to take them for a walk. Our animal friends are capable of higher level thinking, learning complex concepts, and using what they have learned to interact with humans in very meaningful ways. The combination of exceptional intelligence and telepathic ability has interesting implications for training animal companions. We begin with Dr. Sheldrake’s perspectives on the best methods for working with an animal companion.

I think part of the ability to train a dog or cat, or to build up a relationship with them depends on realizing that they do actually pick up your thoughts and intentions. There was a famous British dog trainer, Barbara Woodhouse, who wrote well-known books on dog training.

And Barbara Woodhouse had no doubt about this. She said, “You have to realize that your dog is responding to your thoughts. If you want them to do something, form a clear picture in your mind of what you want them to do.” And it’s the picture in your mind they will respond to, much more than the words or the commands. Some people who work with animals know that.

They’ve either instinctively found it out or they’ve been told how to do it or trained how to do it. Others don’t know and they don’t realize that animals are responding to the pictures in their minds. They don’t form clear intentions in their minds, and of course, in that case the animals can’t really pick them up so easily. I think it depends on the person as well. And to some extent this is a learnable skill, which is why good dog trainers like Barbara Woodhouse had so much success in training people to train dogs.

Just as some humans possess greater natural aptitude in some areas of life than others, Dr. Sheldrake too believes the extent of telepathic awareness varies among individual members of an animal species.

They’re like people, you know? Some people are more sensitive than others. And in every ability in animals and people there’s individual differences. Some people have a better sense of smell, others have a worse sense of smell. Same with animals and telepathy; some dogs are very sensitive and others are not.

I’ve interviewed dozens of people who are blind, who have guide dogs, and they’re some of the people who have the most intimate relationship with their dog. Their life literally depends on their dog. They are a crucial part of their life. And some of them find some guide dogs pick up their thoughts or intentions. They don’t even have to tell the dog where they want to go, they just have to think it and the dog will lead them there.

Some people who have dogs like that told me, they had dogs in the past that didn’t do that, and after one dog dies they get another one, and the next one may not do it. They differ. Like people, everything in nature is different, each individual. So, it’s the same in this too. And the other thing is a lot of people who keep dogs or cats, who found their dogs pick up their thoughts seemingly telepathically, have said to me, “Well, my pet’s much more psychic than I am.”

And I think in fact pets are much more psychic than most people. In the modern society there’s no emphasis put at all on these abilities. In fact, there’s a taboo against them. They’re not encouraged by the educational system. Certainly in Western countries people are brought up to believe they don’t exist. It’s just imagination or it’s an illusion or something. But of course, dogs and cats don’t have a modern education and they haven’t been told it’s impossible, so they just go on doing it anyway. .

Although an animal’s sense of smell, hearing or sight may be more acute than a human’s, it does not fully explain how some species have been noted to anticipate and take action prior to the occurrence of natural calamities. Throughout history, it has been observed that some animals behave oddly or evacuate an area prior to catastrophes such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

On February 23, 1999 the Austrian village of Galtur in the Tyrol region experienced a deadly avalanche where dozens of residents were killed. Just one day prior to the event, small goat-like antelopes called chamois began descending from the mountains. Chamois rarely come to lower elevations in this region and presumably the animals fled the peaks to save their own lives. Dr. Sheldrake has done research in the alpine villages of Switzerland and Austria and found that unusual behavior prior to avalanches is most commonly reported for chamois, ibexes, a kind of wild goat, and dogs.

There’s a lot of evidence that before earthquakes and tsunamis or other disasters, many animals seem to know. There was a lot of evidence about the (2004) Asian tsunami in Thailand, southern India, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, all round the area where the tsunami happened. Animals in coastal areas some of them seemed to know. They left the coastal area. In some cases they saved human lives because people followed them and realized something was wrong. The same happens before earthquakes.

I’ve been collecting data on most of the recent earthquakes in the last 25 years, and in almost all of them, there’s been animals behaving strangely beforehand. For example, in the 1997 Assisi earthquake in Italy, I had a research assistant on the spot within a few days of the earthquake, and it was clear that dogs were howling in the night for several days beforehand in a way that people couldn’t understand. Rats came out of their holes and were swarming over the streets and terraces. So there were a lot of signs.

Some animals at least seem to know when there’s going to be an earthquake or a tsunami. How do we explain it? Actually there is now some proper data. There’s a study on toads in Italy last year that (was) reported in (the science journal) Nature. Someone was studying the mating behavior of toads. The toads were mating and suddenly they stopped and went away from the pond. The scientist observing it, was keeping daily records, couldn’t understand why it had never happened before in previous years – and then there was a major earthquake, in Italy, near there.

Then a few days after the earthquake the toads came back. This is one of the few cases where it’s been systematically documented. Some people say, well, this must just be because the animals can pick up small tremors in the ground. But in that case, why don’t seismologists who have got sensitive instruments pick them up? If it’s that easy, why aren’t they better at forecasting earthquakes?

Some say, well, it must be electrical changes. Well again, if it is, you could detect that with instruments, and no one ever has. Only by studying this can we find out more. The only people who have actually taken this seriously are in China. So starting in 1975 they started a program of getting peasants and workers to inform the authorities if they noticed unusual animal behavior.

And they successfully evacuated several cities before earthquakes. It’s the only place there’s ever been successful (in the) prediction of earthquakes, and it was based largely on animals. I haven’t been able to study most of it because it’s in Chinese. I think it’s more than electrical changes and tremors. There’s more to it than that. I think it’s precognition or presentiment.

Dr. Sheldrake has proposed a system that utilizes animal premonitions as a warning signal for communities about impending earthquakes and tsunamis. First the media would inform residents of areas that are prone to these catastrophes to watch out for abnormal behavior in animals such as fear or anxiety. Next those who observe such behavior would call into a hotline or send a message on the Internet. A computer system would analyze the source of the reports and if there is a sudden large increase in reports from a particular area, a warning would be issued.

Dr. Sheldrake wrote the following in a paper published in the March 2005 edition of the Ecologist, a leading UK environmental affairs magazine: “To explore the potential for animal-based warning systems would cost a small fraction of current earthquake and tsunami research. By doing this research we would be sure to learn something, and could probably save many lives. At present, many millions of pounds are being allocated for setting up tsunami warning systems. I hope that those responsible for spending this money will not ignore what animals can tell us.”

What truly enlightening ideas! Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, thank you for sharing with us your profound knowledge on the telepathic abilities of animals. Your work on animal behavior and telepathy reminds us that our animal friends are indeed precious gifts from the Creator. As a truly noble and compassionate scientist, you do not cause any harm to animals during your experiments. May Heaven bless you for being an outstanding example to the scientific community and the rest of the world.

For more details on Rupert Sheldrake, please visit: www.Sheldrake.org Books and DVDs by Dr. Sheldrake are available at the same website

Thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May all lives be blessed with abundant health and inner peace.