Rory
Closed Account
In the early 90s Rupert Sheldrake spent some time investigating the possibility of telepathic/psychic connections between pets and their owners, with the most commonly cited case being that of Pamela Smart and her dog Jaytee, who Pamela's parents had often seen sitting by the window in anticipation of Pamela's return.
Sheldrake conducted around a hundred experiments and observations, including having volunteers randomly decide when Pamela should return home. He found a very large correlation between Pamela's setting off for home (or her decision to return) and Jaytee's positioning himself at the window, like so (from "experiments with randomly-selected return times") :
The above charts show the average percentage of time spent at the window by Jaytee during: the main period of Smart's absence (main period); during the 10 minutes prior to her setting off to come home (pre-return); and during the first 10 minutes of her homeward journey (return). (A includes data for all visits to the window while B excludes "irrelevant visits".)
In addition to having others decide when she would return home, Sheldrake also conducted observations where Smart went out "naturally" and chose her own time to return. He notes: "On average, Jaytee was at the window for the highest proportion of the time (65%) in the "return" period, when Smart was on her way home. He was at the window 31% of the time in the 10-minute "pre-return" period, and only 11% of the time during the main period of her absence."
Quite a few other experiments and observations were done, and they all showed a very clear tendency for Jaytee's visits to the window to increase substantially when his owner was on her way home. A paper detailing all this can be found here:
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/...-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations
For me, it's difficult to find an explanation other than the proposal that some sort of 'psychic connection' existed between Smart and Jaytee. There was an attempt made to debunk these observations by Richard Wiseman, but having read about his methods and conclusions, it seems a rather lazy and problematic one, and the obvious objections - Jaytee picking up on signals from Smart's parents; routine; increased activity the longer Smart was away from home - all seem to have been controlled for and ruled out.
Thoughts?
Sheldrake conducted around a hundred experiments and observations, including having volunteers randomly decide when Pamela should return home. He found a very large correlation between Pamela's setting off for home (or her decision to return) and Jaytee's positioning himself at the window, like so (from "experiments with randomly-selected return times") :
The above charts show the average percentage of time spent at the window by Jaytee during: the main period of Smart's absence (main period); during the 10 minutes prior to her setting off to come home (pre-return); and during the first 10 minutes of her homeward journey (return). (A includes data for all visits to the window while B excludes "irrelevant visits".)
In addition to having others decide when she would return home, Sheldrake also conducted observations where Smart went out "naturally" and chose her own time to return. He notes: "On average, Jaytee was at the window for the highest proportion of the time (65%) in the "return" period, when Smart was on her way home. He was at the window 31% of the time in the 10-minute "pre-return" period, and only 11% of the time during the main period of her absence."
Quite a few other experiments and observations were done, and they all showed a very clear tendency for Jaytee's visits to the window to increase substantially when his owner was on her way home. A paper detailing all this can be found here:
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/...-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations
For me, it's difficult to find an explanation other than the proposal that some sort of 'psychic connection' existed between Smart and Jaytee. There was an attempt made to debunk these observations by Richard Wiseman, but having read about his methods and conclusions, it seems a rather lazy and problematic one, and the obvious objections - Jaytee picking up on signals from Smart's parents; routine; increased activity the longer Smart was away from home - all seem to have been controlled for and ruled out.
Thoughts?