Animals Sixth Sense

                     Animals Sixth Sense                            

Many if not all animals have a sixth sense that we do not.  For instance dogs hearing is several times more efficient than our hearing.  The Canine can hear sound in a spectrum way beyond our comprehension.  A dogs sense of smell is many times greater than ours.We use dogs to sniff out explosives or illegal drugs at airports. 

For many years stories of cats with strange abilities to foretell natural disaster or weather changes have abounded. Most reports concern cats showing strange behaviours before storms, volcano eruptions, earthquake or even before less natural phenomena such as air raids.

Pigeons have iron-containing structures in their beaks, which are arranged in a complex three-dimensional pattern. This gives the birds an acute sense of spatial orientation, allowing them to identify their geographical position.

Dolphins use sonar to plot the sea around them and detect food. Dolphins communicate with very high frequency noises or clicks.  They have their own language that we cant comprehend.

Platypus use electroreceptors within the skin of their bills to detect the electrical field that gets generated when their prey contracts its muscles.A platypus swings its head from side to side while swimming as a way to enhance this sense. The bill is also lined with mechanoreceptors, which give the animal an acute sense of touch and make the platypus’ bill its primary sense organ.

All spiders have unique mechanoreceptory organs called slit sensilla, which allow them to sense minute mechanical strains on their exoskeleton. This sixth sense makes it easy for spiders to judge things like the size, weight, and possibly even the type of creature that gets caught in their webs. It may also help them tell the difference between the movement of an insect and the movement of the wind, or even a benign blade of grass, as it moves across the web.

Much like salmon returning to their home stream, sea turtles also prefer to return to nest on the same beach where they were born. Given the vast distances they travel, their ability to locate their home beach is remarkable. As with many migratory animals, sea turtles accomplish this feat by measuring the Earth’s magnetic field. However, their ability cannot account for deflection from ocean currents, and some turtles wander aimlessly for long periods of time at sea when currents are strong. Maybe this handicap explains why they live such long lives!

These fish somehow find their way back to spawn in the same rivers from which they were born, despite traveling great distances in the open ocean during their adult life. How do they do it?
Though it is still largely a mystery to science, many suspect that salmon utilize ferromagnetic mineral magnetite deposits in their brains to pick up the Earth’s magnetic field. It has also been discovered that they have a refined sense of smell and can tell the difference between the smell of their home stream from any other.

Bats for instance use their own form of Radar  waves to plot the environment around them, many of the Bat species are blind, they have no need for eyes. 

Venomous snakes of this family of are most easily identified by a pair of deep “pits” that can be found between the nostril and the eye. These pits are actually heat-sensing organs that allow the snakes to see in infrared — an invaluable sixth sense for a predator that often hunts at night. The sense is so sensitive that pit vipers can accurately judge the distance and size of their prey even when their other senses are deprived.

Weatherfish, or weather loaches, have an incredible ability to detect changes in pressure. They use this sense to monitor buoyancy underwater and to compensate for the lack of a swim bladder.
 

Remarkably, this sixth sense also allows these fish to “predict” the weather, and fisherman and aquarium owners have long recognized changes in their activity as large storms approach.

Perhaps animals logical train of thought is not so developed as humans?  Perhaps their sixth sense takes over in a possible dangerous situation and tells the creature to save itself?