Tsunami Revelations

While other news stations provide the world with information on the number of deaths and the causes and effects of the Tsunami, I have picked up some more interesting stories off the net while browsing through some of them.

Sixth sense in animals

Wild animals in Sri Lanka seemed to have escaped the Tsunami, add weight to the notion of animals having the sixth sense. While the giant waves killed about 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast they seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.The waves washed floodwaters up to 2 miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

To date, no official research has been done on this subject due to the lack of techniques to test in a lab or disaster setting.

Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators.The notion of an animal "sixth sense" -or some other mythical power -is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka's battered coast is likely to add to. The Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster and many ancient cultures viewed elephants as sacred animals endowed with special powers or attributes.

With many around the world blaming the authorities for not warning them about the impending disaster which devasteted their home, what if these people had been these signs by the animals and , in an act of faith, heeded it and ran for their lives? In Singapore, where shelter is never a problem this may not resound with many. For others, though,this method of identifying potential danger may very well prove the difference between life and death.

I'm sure many will see their humble hamsters in their cages in a different light.

The Perfect Wave

While we take a second look at the survival instincts of these animals, another animal higher up in the rung of the animal kingdom has found a new way of surviving Tsnamis- by surfing on one.

Markwell was paddling on his surfboard Sunday off the popular Hikkaduwa beach resort on Sri Lanka's palm-fringed southern coast when he was swept up by a tsunami wave and sent crashing over a white sand beach and into a hotel restaurant.He found his dream of a perfect wave, a perfect nightmare.

Said the lucky Briton to Reuters,

"It was really terrible because I was surfing, I was really surfing on a wave I wasn't supposed to be on,"

"As an experienced surfer, when I saw the wave come I realized something was wrong, but I couldn't escape because my surfboard was tied to my ankle."

His wife and son looked on in horror as he crashed onto shore. The wave receeded only to feed a much larger tsunami wave which minutes after.The family regrouped and ran inland.A 30 foot Tsunami wave came minutes of their departure from the beach.