The Wayside Pulpit No.54
Cats and Dogs and Philodendrons
"You'd be surprised
how many times vets tell me the same! People phone up and cancel their
appointments. On being asked why, they say, 'Oh, but we can't find Tabby. She's
disappeared. She must have sensed we were going to bring her to you.'"
So said the Scientist being
interviewed on a recent BBC programme. He had been working on the strange
behaviour of cats and dogs for some time, collecting information about those
traits which cannot be rationally accounted for, things like pre-cognition,
mind-reading, knowledge-at-a-distance, and so on.
"Our experiments have
shown that dogs know when their masters are near to coming home. Even
half an hour before they get there. And it's not because of regularity. That's
an easy one to answer. No, we've seen it in cases where the man is never sure
when he'll be back, but his dog knows! He'll start getting excited, wagging his
tail, standing near the front door, scratching it with his paw, and sure enough
he will be found to be right. How does he know?"
"We find this higher
echelon of mental activity to be present in cats, dogs, parrots, mina birds
(who often tell you what they know in understandable language), but so far we
haven't seen any evidence in guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, fish or stick
insects." [But we have been caring for our daughter's guinea
pigs, and they know when she is about to return. They whistle excitedly before
she's even out of her car, and before we are aware she's come home.]
"The Chinese use the
behaviour of cats and dogs to warn them of the imminence of earthquakes. How do
they know? The strain in the earth isn't the answer because the build-up occurs
over a vast period of time. But the animals sense when it is about to
break."
"Pigeons know where to
go. Some people believe it's due to the earth's magnetism, but that would only
tell them the direction of North. What is the origin of the homing
instinct?"
As I listened to this
fascinating programme, it brought to mind a book I'd read recently, entitled
"The Secret Life of Plants," by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird.
The authors had amassed a wealth of information about plant behaviour which
bears strange similarities to the type of animal behaviour mentioned above.
Experiments had been performed by attaching electrodes to the leaves of certain
plants, and monitoring the electrical changes using hyper-sensitive
galvanometers attached to pen recorders. One may liken the result to that of a
lie-detector attached to a human being.
Backster used specimens of Dracaena
masangeana and Philodendron cordatum for his work. The leaves
were eminently suited to the application of electrodes without causing damage.
These specimens were in his own collection. He'd had them for a while, and
tended them carefully. On a certain New Year's Eve in
What kind of energy wave
was responsible? He encased the plants in a wire mesh known as a Faraday
Cage (which prevented the entrance of electromagnetic waves), and also a lead
container. But still the plants responded, regardless of these or any other
form of shield. Furthermore, distance was no object. The "carrier
wave" was oblivious to the well-known "inverse square law" so
often found in Physics. Plants that "belonged" to people, those who
tended them and cared for them, built up a relationship with their
"owners" in this strange and unexpected fashion.
I could write at greater
length about these strange phenomena, but will leave it at that. What concerns
us all is the origin and meaning of this information. Human beings have a
tendency to think of themselves as the masters of the world, and that animals
and plants are here to be used, or provide us with pleasure, at will. But it
seems these very servants of man possess faculties of a higher order than any
of us, so much so that we cannot even understand it. Science has no answers,
only an increasing pile of awkward and embarrassing facts.
The Apostle Paul tells us
(in Romans 1) that the creation reflects the divinity of God, so that we are
without excuse if we do not accept the evidence all around us, every day, and
in every place. Animals and plants are not "fallen" in the sense of
Adamic kind. Have they been allowed to retain something that Adam had
originally, and which we have now all but lost? Just occasionally it crops up
in things like telepathy between identical twins, but for the most part our
highly organised, technologically dependent lifestyle robs us of knowing even
the little that may be left of this ability.
I wonder whether our prayer
life is dulled as a result, and our ability to hear that "still small
voice" made more difficult. Perhaps in this New Year we should aim at
simplicity rather than complexity.