Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals

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It's rare for a book's title to say so clearly what the book is about. In the case of Rupert Sheldrake's latest work, the controversial content is right on the front cover. Pet owners will see it and smile in recognition; skeptical scientists will shake their heads and mutter about "maverick scholars." We all know of cases of dogs (and cats) who know when their owners are coming home, who go to wait at the door or window 10 minutes or more before their human arrives. Conditioned by the tight rigor of contemporary scientific thinking, we either look for rational explanations or we file the phenomenon away in our minds as "unexplained" and are careful not to talk about it with our scientist friends.

Sheldrake has shown in the past that he is not afraid to be labeled a rebel, thanks to his theory of morphic resonance, which suggests the following: Natural systems, or morphic units, at all levels of complexity are animated, organized, and coordinated by morphic fields, which contain an inherent memory. Natural systems inherit this collective memory from all previous things of their kind by a process called morphic resonance, with the result that patterns of development and behavior become increasingly habitual through repetition.

Sheldrake believes that the "telepathy" between pets and humans, or between flocks of birds or schools of fish that move as a single organism, can be explained this theory. Sheldrake is less persuaded by anecdotes that suggest animal clairvoyance--warning of something in the near future--but refuses to disallow the possibility.

He accepts that the case histories he details so thoroughly in this book are anecdotal, but that makes them no less real; and as a scientist himself he sets up experimental conditions for studying this previously ignored phenomenon that show beyond any doubt that the phenomenon exists. He castigates traditional scientists for their refusal to countenance anything that doesn't fit in with their existing paradigms (or prejudices) and challenges them to come up with some more "acceptable" explanation--but none is forthcoming.

This fascinating book is a first attempt at a scientific investigation into a puzzling but quite common occurrence. One hopes that other scientists will follow Sheldrake's brave lead. --David V. Barrett


From Publishers Weekly
While there have been many books on pets' psychic powers and on animals' seemingly paranormal abilities, English biologist Sheldrake's distinctive contribution is to set forth a theory that begins to make sense of this baffling realm. Sheldrake's bold and influential hypothesis of morphic fields (first developed in his 1988 book The Presence of the Past) asserts that members of a group are linked by self-organizing regions of influenceAfields that have a history, evolve, contain a collective memory, and shape the development of organisms, crystals and new ideas, as well as patterns of behavior, adaptation and learning. Applying this hypothesis to the animal kingdom, he maintains that cats, dogs, horses, rabbits and other animals can communicate telepathically with people (or with other animals) with whom they have emotional bondsAand that morphic fields act as a channel for this ESP. Sheldrake surveyed or interviewed more than 1000 pet owners, dog trainers, veterinarians, zookeepers, blind people with guide dogs, horse trainers and riders and pet-shop proprietors. His study is filled with marvelous stories of missing pets finding their way home over unfamiliar terrain; of cats and dogs responding emotionally, sometimes at a great distance, to the suffering or death of their owners; of animals' precognitive warnings of earthquakes, impending epileptic seizures, bombing attacks and other imminent dangers; of cats, dogs and parrots responding to the ring of the telephone whenever a particular person calls. Skeptics may scoff, yet the cumulative weight of evidence Sheldrake assembles is impressive, and an appendix outlines simple research projects animal lovers can conduct to test whether their pets have psychic powers. This pioneering study throws a floodlight on an area largely ignored by institutional science. Illustrations. Author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-Not just dogs, but also cats, horses, and many other creatures appear in this attractive book. Though it has the interest inherent in any good animal story, it also offers teens an outstanding introduction to science. In a highly readable style, Sheldrake looks at the way recent generations of scientists have begun to explore animal behavior and how it has expanded our understanding of humans in the process. The author describes working with pet owners to document animal behaviors and to test possible explanations. He also relates these experiments and theories to a wide range of modern scientific concerns, from quantum physics to sociobiology. He points out that this is an exciting new field of inquiry, one still open to participation by nonscientists. He suggests several activities that readers can easily carry out and invites them to share observations and experiences via his Web page.Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax Country Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
We've all heard anecdotes about dogs who wait at the door for their owners to come home, cats who travel hundreds of miles to return home, and pets who provide comfort to depressed or sick people. Add to these stories of dogs who can sniff and detect cancer, dogs who howl when an absent owner dies, and cats who anticipate telephone calls from their owners, and you begin to wonder if animals are indeed telepathic. Sheldrake (Seven Experiments That Could Change the World) wondered, and he spent five years conducting research on the perceptiveness of pets. His conclusions may cause you to be surprised, dismayed, or disbelieving, but you will never be bored. For millions of pet owners, Sheldrake's book will affirm what they already knowAthat animals have abilities that have been lost by modern humans. This book is highly recommended and will be in demand by readers of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.APeggie Partello, Keene State Coll. Lib., NH Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
The seeming sixth sense that many animals exhibit is the subject of this new book on the paranormal abilities of animals. Sheldrake, a biochemist with 25 years of experience as a professional scientist, feels that animals have powers that we have lost. Calling his new work "a book of recognition" of these abilities, the author reports the results of five years of extensive research as he followed up on anecdotal accounts from pet owners on the homing abilities of lost pets, animals that show premonitions of earthquakes or epileptic seizures, and the fact that animals anticipate the arrival home of their owners. Defending his use of anecdotal evidence (the Greek root of the work merely means "not published") by the fact that most researchers do not take pets seriously, Sheldrake used three approaches to gather evidence: interviews with animal handlers, formal surveys, and experimental investigations. The book is enriched with stories from animal owners about their animals' abilities, such as the cow who broke out of her pen and tracked down her newly sold calf miles away or German pigeons that always flew away half an hour before the Allied bombs fell. Whether or not the reader believes in the psychic abilities of animals, all will be fascinated by the weight of the evidence and by Sheldrake's clear commentary. Extensive notes and a thorough bibliography round out what will be an extremely popular book. Nancy Bent


From Kirkus Reviews
An open-minded inquiry into animals' precognitive capabilities from Sheldrake (Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, 1995), attentive to the evidence and thoroughly investigative, conducted in the belief that science can be fun and rigorous, inquisitive as well as skeptical. Do animals possess telepathy? What lies behind their uncanny sense of direction? What is it chickens know that the scientists studying earthquakes do not? Sheldrake, a British biochemnist, has gathered a vast number of case histories documenting animals, from dogs and cats to horses and parakeets, that can tell when their owners are coming home, animals that anticipate epileptic seizures and air raids, cats that can tell who is on the phone, animals that find their human families after being separated by huge distances, not to mention the whole fabulous act known as migration. By way of explanation, Sheldrake proposes the possibility of what he calls morphic fields, self-organizing regions of influence, invisible blueprints as it were, with both spatial and temporal aspects, that interconnect and organize a system. Within the elasticity of the morphic field, ``channels of telepathic communication'' operate over the vastness of spacethe type of connectedness witnessed in quantum entanglement theoryand the fields, large and small, specific and nonlocal, possess a collective memory, an instinct for habitual patterns shaped through experience. Sheldrake situates all this within ideas currently entertained by physicists and cosmologists and migration theorists and others, so that the word preposterous never seems applicable. What would be preposterous is trying to explain away the incidence of animal prescience and precognition as irrelevant and the product of wishful thinking, or to dismiss the potential that animals may have to forewarn events from medical crises to seismic upheavals, examples of which abound in these pages and not infrequently flabbergast. Sheldrake is a pleasure not just because he roams way beyond the mechanistic theory of nature, but because he appreciates worthy new questions as well as answers, one such being the time-honored Why? (b&w photos and drawings, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Delightful . . . this book will turn our understanding of animals inside out."
-- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

"Wonderful . . . splendid and thought-provoking."
-- Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs


Review
"Delightful . . . this book will turn our understanding of animals inside out."
-- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

"Wonderful . . . splendid and thought-provoking."
-- Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs


Book Description
How do cats know when it's time to go to the vet, even before the cat carrier comes out? How do dogs know when their owners are returning home at unexpected times? How can horses find their way back to the stable over completely unfamiliar terrain?

With a scientist's mind and an animal lover's compassion, world-renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake presents a groundbreaking exploration of animal behavior that will profoundly change the way we think about animals -- and ourselves. After five years of extensive research involving thousands of people who have pets and work with animals, Dr. Sheldrake proves conclusively what many pet owners already know: there is a strong connection between humans and animals that defies present-day scientific understanding. This remarkable book deserves a place next to the most beloved and valuable books on animals, including When Elephants Weep, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and The Hidden Life of Dogs.


From the Inside Flap
How do cats know when it's time to go to the vet, even before the cat carrier comes out? How do dogs know when their owners are returning home at unexpected times? How can horses find their way back to the stable over completely unfamiliar terrain?

With a scientist's mind and an animal lover's compassion, world-renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake presents a groundbreaking exploration of animal behavior that will profoundly change the way we think about animals -- and ourselves. After five years of extensive research involving thousands of people who have pets and work with animals, Dr. Sheldrake proves conclusively what many pet owners already know: there is a strong connection between humans and animals that defies present-day scientific understanding. This remarkable book deserves a place next to the most beloved and valuable books on animals, including When Elephants Weep, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and The Hidden Life of Dogs.


From the Back Cover
"Delightful . . . this book will turn our understanding of animals inside out."
-- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

"Wonderful . . . splendid and thought-provoking."
-- Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs


About the Author
RUPERT SHELDRAKE studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, took a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge, and was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. The author of several books and more than fifty scientific papers, he lives in London.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Part I
HUMAN-ANIMAL BONDS

Chapter 1
The Domestication of Animals

Many people love their pets and are loved by them. In this chapter I explore the evolution and the nature of human-animal bonds.
But first it is important to recognize that emotional bonds between people and animals are the exception rather than the rule. For every well-loved cat or dog, hundreds of domesticated animals are confined to intensive farming systems and research laboratories. In many Third World countries beasts of burden are often treated brutally. And traditional societies are not usually subscribers to modern ideals of animal welfare. Eskimos, for example, tend to treat their huskies harshly.

But in spite of all this exploitation, abuse, and neglect, many people form bonds with animals from childhood onward. Young children are commonly given teddy bears or other toy animals, and they like hearing stories about animals. Above all, most like keeping actual animals. The majority of pets live in households with children.

Hearing tales about frightening animals, including the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood," and forming relationships with friendly ones seems to be a normal and fundamental aspect of human nature. Indeed our nature has been shaped throughout its evolutionary history by our interactions with animals, and all human cultures are enriched by songs, dances, rituals, myths, and stories about them.

The evolution of human-animal bonds
The earliest named hominid species, known from fossil remains, are Australopithecus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis, dating back over 4 million years. The first stone tools were used about 2 1/2 million years ago, and signs of meat eating appear about a million years later, around the time that Homo erectus spread out of Africa into Eurasia (Figure 1.1). The use of fire may have begun around 700,000 years ago. Modern humans originated in Africa about 150,000 years ago. The first cave paintings, including many of animals, appeared about 30,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution began about 10,000 years ago, and the first civilizations and written scripts about 5,000 years ago.

Our ancestors lived as gatherers and hunters, with gathering far more important than hunting. The old image of man the hunter striding confidently out onto the African veldt is a myth. Only a small proportion of the food eaten by today's hunter-gatherers comes from animals hunted by the men; most comes from gathering done mainly by women. The exceptions are the hunter-gatherers of the plant-poor Arctic regions. Hominids and early Homo sapiens obtained small amounts of meat more by scavenging the kills left by more effective predators like big cats than by hunting for themselves. Big game hunting, as opposed to scavenging, may date back only some 70,000 to 90,000 years.
In hunter-gatherer cultures, human beings do not see themselves as separate from other animals but as intimately interconnected. The specialists in communication with the nonhuman world are shamans, and through their guardian spirits or power animals, shamans connect themselves with the powers of animals. There is a mysterious solidarity between people and animals. Shamans experience themselves as being guided by animals or as changing into animals, understanding their language, and sharing in their prescience and occult powers.

The earliest domesticated dogs
The first animals to be domesticated were dogs. Their ancestors, wolves, hunted in packs, just as men hunted, and from an early stage dogs were used in hunting as well as for guarding human settlements. Their domestication predated the development of agriculture.

The conventional view is the domestication of wolves began between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. But recent evidence from the study of DNA in dogs and wolves points to a far earlier date for the first transformation of wolf to dog, over 100,000 years ago. This new evidence also suggests that wolves were domesticated several times, not just once, and that dogs have continued to crossbreed with wild wolves.

If this theory is confirmed, it means that our ancient companionship with dogs may have played an important part in human evolution. Dogs could have played a major role in the advances in human hunting techniques that occurred some 70,000 to 90,000 years ago.
The Australian veterinarian David Paxton goes so far as to suggest that people did not so much domesticate wolves as wolves domesticated people. Wolves may have started living around the periphery of human settlements as a kind of infestation. Some learned to live with human beings in a mutually helpful way and gradually evolved into dogs. At the very least, they would have protected human settlements, and given warnings by barking at anything approaching.

The wolves that evolved into dogs have been enormously successful in evolutionary terms. They are found everywhere in the inhabited world, hundreds of millions of them. The descendants of the wolves that remained wolves are now sparsely distributed, often in endangered populations.


From the Hardcover edition.


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I can't recommend this book enough. Had I the time, I would have liked to research and write it myself. — veterinarian and author, The Animal Doctor's Answer Book Understanding Your Dog, Understanding Your Cat, and Animals as Teachers and Healers


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