[RYCeT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhd812 wow I just read that not one animal has been found dead. I think I have a new respect for wildlife now! people killed = about 150,000 animals killed = 0 we humans may think we are higher then animals but I think were not.... besides our thumbs

It's well known that animal has sixth sense regarding natural disasters. I wonder why we don't have that capability too.

 

[Lisa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RYCeT It's well known that animal has sixth sense regarding natural disasters. I wonder why we don't have that capability too.

Because we're too busy using our brain for insignifant things which the human race likes to call higher intelligence?

 

[Andrea]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RYCeT It's well known that animal has sixth sense regarding natural disasters. I wonder why we don't have that capability too.

Possibly, such sorts of faculties Man could have lost over the ages, should he have had anymore (a 6th, a 7th... who knows) than the well known 'five senses' all the western civilization is built on.
We could have lost, in the course of the 'evolution' path undertaken, some ancient faculties left more and more un-practised.

 

[eyeteeth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RYCeT It's well known that animal has sixth sense regarding natural disasters. I wonder why we don't have that capability too.

Science anyone?
If you want to call having hearing beyond the human range "sixth sense" go ahead but you'd be deceiving yourself of course.
They heard it coming probably.
But not all.
"In the Andamans, hundreds of people poured into eight camps in Port Blair, the main town, having walked long distances through dense forests.
One survivor, G. Balan, told of fleeing his village only to reach a crocodile-infested lagoon.
"We realized that there was certain death on this side, so we decided to cross and take the risk," Balan said.

"The crocodiles were not looking. They were busy eating on the shore, where there were many human and animal bodies. It was hide-and-seek. But we swam across," he said. CBC link

Or from Mullaittivu, Sri Lanka

"A few doors down the street, Tharmarasa Kookashandam, 16, was sweeping the kitchen floor of her cinder-block house when she heard the other girls yelling for her to run. The sea was coming in.

We saw the black wave coming, high above us, and we all ran," she said yesterday.

"The water hit me. The first wave came to our knees, the second to our shoulders, and the third was taller than our house."

It pushed them forward, into the town, and then sucked them back toward the beach with even greater force.

"I saw my mother dragged forward and dropped from high in the wave, and her head split in half when she hit a tree," Ms. Kookashandam said yesterday. "I was pushed forward along the ground, it scraped me open, and I grabbed the leg of a big dog that was going past me.

"I held on to the dog tightly, and it saved me because it kept swimming to the top of the wave. The dog swam against the waves, but I watched all my friends going out to sea."

Ms. Kookashandam watched her sister and her infant brother disappear into the wave. Nearby, Nogadinap saw her six best friends "taken out to sea," never to return, along with her mother. Globe & Mail link
From 'Town's children were just swept out to sea'
By DOUG SAUNDERS

 

[aerius]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhd812 wow I just read that not one animal has been found dead.

Probably because any dead animals would've been eaten by starving humans by now.

 

[dffman2001]

From what pictures that I saw, thousands of fish were stranded on shore after the tsunami.

 

[Jahn]

After discussion with the wife, we both pooled our resources and donated to the American Red Cross through Amazon.com. Both of our birthdays are this month, but we think it's a better idea to give the gift to the relief effort this year. I highly recommend everyone to do what you can - if not financially, then through your prayers!

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RYCeT It's well known that animal has sixth sense regarding natural disasters. I wonder why we don't have that capability too.

In China, at one time they did some experiments to see if this was true, but they were stopped when it became very apparent that animals did not have any advance consciousness of earthquakes. If you haven't seen any dead animals, it is probably because they were swept out to see or because photographers have chosen to show human misery and death over animal misery and death.

 

[Snake]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bunnyears In China, at one time they did some experiments to see if this was true, but they were stopped when it became very apparent that animals did not have any advance consciousness of earthquakes. If you haven't seen any dead animals, it is probably because they were swept out to see or because photographers have chosen to show human misery and death over animal misery and death.

It might be a combination of factors. For instance, an earthquake must travel at the speed its force wave can propagate through earth and rock. It might be that (most) animal's greater sense of hearing can hear the rumble disturbance in the background / distance when the epicenter is not local and that greatly upsets them. It might not be a 'great' foretelling but just a number of moments or a minute or two.

In the case of the tsunami the effects were so great, and so widespread, that probably if any animal did indeed 'sense' something they just didn't have anywhere to go to get away from it in time. From the fish to the crocodiles to the monkeys where could they go, in sufficent time, to get away from the effects of a tital wave that huge?? They could only travel so far so fast, or like the crocs and the fish simply get overpowered by the forces of the water that they themselves were traveling in.

 

[dffman2001]

 

[eyeteeth]

Arjuna Seneviratna, a 40-year-old IT consultant from Sri Lanka:

"When the first wave came in, we were happy that we were seeing something that was really strange, but it was a very mild wave. Then the sea receded back, and we didn't know what that meant.

It was like someone had pulled the plug on the ocean, and crags and outcroppings of rock inside the sea were visible for the first time in years.

We just watched it, and I was taking photographs of it. Then came this massive wall of water. What did I do? I just sat and watched it. I just watched it and watched it as it came in - it took maybe four seconds from the point when I was aware of it to the point when it hit the hotel.

Those four seconds were like a lifetime. Even if someone runs at you with a knife, you can hit him back, or run away or claim insurance or whatever. This time, there was nothing I could do. I could only watch, and it was coming in, and it hit the crags, and I saw those people on the crags just being flung into the air like confetti, just blown out of the water."

"I wasn't submerged in water. The problem is not being submerged in water - it's the sheer force of the destruction. I think I was relatively lucky that I was very close to the ocean - that meant that only water hit us.

But if I had been 150m (500 feet) inside the coastline I would have been hit by flying debris, by 250 cars, by brick walls, by reinforcement bars. I would not have drowned, I would have been beaten to death.

The only reason I think I survived was that the walls were relatively strong to withstand the initial impact."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4138913.stm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bunnyears photographers have chosen to show human misery and death over animal misery and death.

Are the U.S. newspapers showing the full grimness of the scenes? The Canadian papers have pictures of Indonesian bays packed with floating human bodies and the mugshots of unidentified men, women and children with their beaten and distorted faces. Horrible but an idea of true tragedy is indeed being conveyed with far greater impact than just pictures of broken buildings and overturned cars.

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyeteeth Are the U.S. newspapers showing the full grimness of the scenes?

No, the pictures in the papers here seem so sanitized! Images must be so horrifying that even the worst tabloids avoid showing too much or too many. How would anyone buy a paper with such horrific images? We get a lot of sad children who have survived but no pictures of the thousands of children being buried. Then again, NYC has gone through 9/11, and people are having flashbacks when they see others trying to find traces of loved ones that seem to have vaporized, as it were.

Today's NY Post is filled with Tsunami "miracle" stories. Earlier in the week, there were more horrific pictures, but I guess it's old news now.

 

[Lisa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bunnyears No, the pictures in the papers here seem so sanitized! Images must be so horrifying that even the worst tabloids avoid showing too much or too many. How would anyone buy a paper with such horrific images? We get a lot of sad children who have survived but no pictures of the thousands of children being buried. Then again, NYC has gone through 9/11, and people are having flashbacks when they see others trying to find traces of loved ones that seem to have vaporized, as it were. Today's NY Post is filled with Tsunami "miracle" stories. Earlier in the week, there were more horrific pictures, but I guess it's old news now.

Just watched a bit of CNN and it does seem like it's sanitized. When I watch Dutch TV I see suvivors walking between the countless bodies searching for their loved ones. Bodies floating in water when others walk trough that same pool of water to get to their what used to be houses.

. The pictures on CNN showed wrecked cars, houses and boats. And the dead people were not shown up close.
I don't know what is the right thing to show. I know I sometimes look away to just not see the horror. I guess as journalist you have to make a decision to show just enough to get the message across and no needless horrifying pictures that serve no purpose and can be disrespectful to the victims. But where is that line?

 

[Andrea]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisa But where is that line?

I think it's just where the conscience tells; it seems to me that any systematic attitude shown by a news channel is controlled by a combination of an idea of common sense and, ineluctably, a sense of convenience.

 

[Bunnyears]

Certainly, journalists need ethics as well as the next person! But, when you have a calamity of such epic proportions, I think that it is necessary to show it as accurately as possible. This is the history of the world we are talking about, and it will do no one any good to know 5 or 10 months down the line that American response may have been muted because the media "sanitized" their coverage. Already, I hear a lot of people complaining that the US is contributing too much, and that tax-payers should get a deduction from their taxes if they don't want to send money to the ravaged areas! It's totally ridiculous, because the most important thing any human being can do is to realize that we are all part of the larger community stuck on this one small planet.

I also think it's interesting that Jeb Bush is being sent to the areas to see what is needed, with Colin Powell as tour leader. I guess W is trying to give his younger brother some foreign policy credentials -- another area for speculation.