Source : Local 10.com, 30 Dec '04
By : IBS Inc
  

	Sri Lanka was devastated by the killer tsunamis.

"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the National Wildlife Department, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"No elephants are dead. Not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

Before the hurricanes that hit Florida this year, a similar phenomenon was noted in sharks.

At a conference at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota in October, biologists presented reports on the behavior of tagged sharks that they tracked as Hurricane Charley came ashore. They compared the results of the study to similar findings about the behavior of sharks during Tropical Storm Gabrielle in September 2001.

Of eight radio-tagged sharks in lower Pine Island Sound, six escaped before the storm made landfall, Mote Marine Laboratory biologist Michelle Heupel found.

The two other sharks also disappeared from the range of the sensing equipment. They may have swum into the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico, into Charlotte Harbor or elsewhere.

Just before Tropical Storm Gabrielle hit southwestern Florida, all 14 tagged blacktip sharks in Terra Ceia Bay bolted from their natural nursery and swam to deeper waters.

"I'm guessing that this is something that is hard-wired," Heupal said.

Although the estuaries are protected, they are also shallow. Given a big enough storm surge, the sharks could be pushed onto shore and stranded, she said.

Heupel's theory for the pre-storm evacuations is that sharks can somehow sense the decrease in atmospheric pressure that comes as a hurricane approaches. As air pressure decreases, water pressure also drops.

In both Charley and Gabrielle, the timing of the sharks' evacuations seemed to have coincided with sharp declines in air pressure. Because Charley was a faster-moving hurricane, the sharks had less warning. They left the lower sound later and returned sooner than the sharks did during Gabrielle, she said.

Scientists have not come up with an explanation for the evasive behavior of the animals in Indonesia before the tsunamis, but some believe they may have sensed the earthquake that preceded the killer waves.