Apparently, it's not just illness, but actual "death" itself (from any cause) that some dogs can sense:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/16 ... eaper_dog/can't find any online references now, but I've read old "stories" (accounts) where the family dog back in England would start to howl and whine "for no reason", then, at some later point in time, folks would learn that that point in time was when the dogs master had died in some far off land (India or Africa or what not)
If true, then this implies that there is something beyond traditional senses being used by the dogs...
I was "fortunate" enough to be living a primarily agrarian lifestyle during the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989, San Francisco, World Series, Embarcadero, etc.) I, and all of the livestock were fully 300 miles from the epicenter. About a half hour before the quake all (ALL) of the livestock went Crazy... lot's of noise, lot's of stamping around, bouncing off the fences, wild eyes...
Then, shortly (minutes) before the quake, all (ALL) the livestock stopped dead in their tracks and just stood there, quivering silently... made doubly spooky by the fact that ALL the wild birds stopped singing at a time of day when the air should have been Full of twilight bird song... even the crickets were quiet.
This site (scroll down to March 1, 1990 entry)
http://www.sfmuseum.org/alm/quakes4.htmlstates that snakes at the Lindsay Museum in Walnut Creek were going crazy shortly before that quake hit...
I was in L.A. for the Sylmar quake of '71 (I think they call it the San Fernando quake now *shrugs*) and I remember getting in trouble because I could not / would not go to sleep the night before (the quake hit at 0600 in the morning) Something was scaring me that I could not explain to my parents (I wasn't quite six years old yet). I had other waves of 'fear/apprehension' then in the L.A. area, which, looking back, seem to be quake related...
Shortly after that we left L.A. and took a trip across country, visiting relatives along the way. One in particular was my Great Uncle Rufus, who was a hundred and something years old and bed ridden. I'd Never met this person before but I HAD met many "strange old bed ridden" people before. (ie this was Not the first time I'd seen a very old person in bed with tubes running into their body so that wasn't it) For whatever reason, good ol' kind hearted and super sweet Great Uncle Rufus scared the 'ell out of me as a kid that day...
That night he died.
I don't feel that it's just dogs (or other animals) that can sense "weird stuff" but humans too... Children rely HEAVILY upon "intuition" as their cognitive abilities have yet to develop... IF their "intuition" is "good" AND they act upon it accordingly, THEN I can see how that "sense" could have genuine "survival value" and could be passed on (and perhaps even reinforced) in successive generations...
Expendable Guy. The show is no good without them.