Reports of animals' "sixth sense" in detecting hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions long before the earth starts shaking go back centuries. After the Dec. 26 tsunami, a Danish man staying in Ao Sane Beach, north of Phuket, wrote on a Danish website: "Dogs are smarter than all of un.. They started running away up to the hilltops long before we even realized what was coming,''

Animals' sensory physiology-supersensitive to sound,temperature,touch,vibration,chemical activity and magnetic fields-givesthem a head start in the days and hours before natural calamities.

It appears a lot of animals have sensory organs that detect these microtremors and micro-changes that wo cannot possibly monitor," says Geoge Pararas-Carayannis, a former expert from the Unicersity of Hawaii who leads the Tsunami Society.

2."It's sensitivity that we humans don't have. But animals through mmillions of years of evolution have developed it and that's how they have ben ableto survive as a spacies. It is run or perish,'' says Pararas-Carayannis.

Why not humans ? When an imminent ?disaster so unimaginably basic as this occurs, can only creatures in tune with nature at its most elemental sense it coming?