Pet psychic
Encyclopedia
A pet psychic, animal communicator, or pet whisperer is a person who claims to be able to communicate psychic
ally with animals. Some pet psychics claim to be able to communicate with long-dead animals, while others are more like animal communicators or animal psychologist
s. Psychic refers to a claimed ability to perceive
information hidden from the normal senses through what is described as extrasensory perception, or to those people said to have such abilities. Pet Whisperer is usually applied to a trainer like César Millan
or Monty Roberts
, who use their body language and the psychology of the dog or horse, to communicate with the animal.
The first animal communicators in the context of pet psychics was in the early twentieth century, when the Association for Research and Enlightenment
began researching paranormal
and psychic abilities in humans. They claimed they could communicate telepathically with animals living or dead. The number of businesses offering pet psychic services has steadily increased but the industry remains unregulated and its claims unverifiable scientifically
Psychics rely on different techniques when doing an animal reading. Pet psychics communicate with animals and some claim to connect with an animal's soul. Some claim the readings are done by communicating with their "electromagnetic energy" similar to reiki
and therapeutic touch
healing. Others claim the animal does not need to be proximately close to the one doing the reading or even alive. Some pet psychics claim they can do a reading over the phone. A large industry exists where psychics provide advice and counsel to clients, though skeptics attribute such putative powers to intentional trickery
or self-delusion
.
Parapsychologist
Rupert Sheldrake
claims that he has shown in experiments that some pets are psychic. A parrot, N'kisi
, in New York uttered statistically more words that had to do with random cards her owner were looking at in another room in one series of experiments, and in another series of experiments a dog, Jaytee, spent statistically more time at the window during the time his owner was on her way home (at random times) than other times when Jaytees owner was out
Replicating Sheldrake's experiment with Jaytee, Richard Wiseman
in 1998 designed four tests for a dog a Austrian television show felt had been successful knowing when its owner would return home. Wiseman ruled out all cues and routines the dog could previously have been picking up. When tested with these controls the dog failed all four tests. JREF investigator Joe Nickell
writes that "the experiments suggested "that selective memory, multiple guesses and selective matching could often have sufficient scope to give an owner the impression of a paranormal effect."
or Dr. Doolittle's books and movies. Amongst contemporary pet psychics, Sonya Fitzpatrick
with her show The Pet Psychic
and dog trainer/dog psychologist César Millan with his show Dog Whisperer
are arguably the best known.
has rejected all claims of psychic phenomena, and no compelling evidence of psychic phenomena has been found. A study using neuroimaging
published in 2008 provides the strongest evidence yet obtained that paranormal mental phenomena do not exist. A study at Bangor University, Wales, of people who hear voices found that fMRI scans of one 'animal communicator,' whilst allegedly hearing the voice of each of ten pets belonging to the research team, showed activity in Heschl's gyrus. When asked to imagine a conversation with each of ten humans, the activity was in a totally different brain area. In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological
phenomena." In 1991 a survey of opinion amongst scientists in the National Academy of Sciences, 96% described themselves as "skeptical
" of ESP, although 2% believed in psi
and 10% felt that parapsychological research should be encouraged.
Joe Nickell
believes that cold reading
is the reason why so many pet psychics look like they are communicating with animals. Watching pet psychics like Gerri Leigh and Animal Planet
's Sonya Fitzpatrick
work in front of an audience, their conversations with the animals appear to be impressive until you understand that "it is the pet owners, not the pets themselves, who "validate" the pronouncements."
Linguistic professor Karen Stollznow
writing for The Skeptic
magazine tested a pet psychic with a cat named Jed. Not only was the psychic "completely inaccurate in her reading of Jed’s age, place of birth, background, behavior, health, and my health..." she was unable to tell that Jed was not her cat. Stollznow concludes that "language is human-species specific. We don’t and can’t “know” what animals think."
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
ally with animals. Some pet psychics claim to be able to communicate with long-dead animals, while others are more like animal communicators or animal psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
s. Psychic refers to a claimed ability to perceive
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
information hidden from the normal senses through what is described as extrasensory perception, or to those people said to have such abilities. Pet Whisperer is usually applied to a trainer like César Millan
Cesar Millan
Cesar Millan, is a Mexican-born American dog trainer. A self-taught expert, he is widely known for his television series The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, now in its seventh season and broadcast in more than eighty countries worldwide...
or Monty Roberts
Monty Roberts
Marvin Earl "Monty" Roberts is a horse trainer whose 1996-1997 autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses, became a best-seller...
, who use their body language and the psychology of the dog or horse, to communicate with the animal.
The first animal communicators in the context of pet psychics was in the early twentieth century, when the Association for Research and Enlightenment
Association for Research and Enlightenment
The Association for Research and Enlightenment , also known as Edgar Cayce's A.R.E., was founded by Edgar Cayce in 1931 to research and explore subjects such as holistic health, ancient mysteries, personal spirituality, dreams and dream interpretation, intuition, philosophy and reincarnation...
began researching paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
and psychic abilities in humans. They claimed they could communicate telepathically with animals living or dead. The number of businesses offering pet psychic services has steadily increased but the industry remains unregulated and its claims unverifiable scientifically
Psychics rely on different techniques when doing an animal reading. Pet psychics communicate with animals and some claim to connect with an animal's soul. Some claim the readings are done by communicating with their "electromagnetic energy" similar to reiki
Reiki
is a spiritual practice developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui. The teaching was continued and adapted by various teachers. It uses a technique commonly called palm healing as a form of complementary and alternative medicine and is sometimes classified as oriental medicine by some...
and therapeutic touch
Therapeutic touch
Therapeutic touch , also known as Non-Contact Therapeutic Touch , is an energy therapy which practitioners claim promotes healing and reduces pain and anxiety. Practitioners of therapeutic touch state that by placing their hands on, or near, a patient, they are able to detect and manipulate the...
healing. Others claim the animal does not need to be proximately close to the one doing the reading or even alive. Some pet psychics claim they can do a reading over the phone. A large industry exists where psychics provide advice and counsel to clients, though skeptics attribute such putative powers to intentional trickery
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
or self-delusion
Delusion
A delusion is a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological...
.
Parapsychologist
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake is an English scientist. He is known for having proposed an unorthodox account of morphogenesis and for his research into parapsychology. His books and papers stem from his theory of morphic resonance, and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory,...
claims that he has shown in experiments that some pets are psychic. A parrot, N'kisi
N'kisi
N'kisi is an African Grey Parrot who is thought to exhibit advanced English usage skills and other abilities.-Accomplishments:According to news reports and websites, as of January 2004 N'kisi had a vocabulary of about 950 words and used them in context, frequently in complete sentences, had...
, in New York uttered statistically more words that had to do with random cards her owner were looking at in another room in one series of experiments, and in another series of experiments a dog, Jaytee, spent statistically more time at the window during the time his owner was on her way home (at random times) than other times when Jaytees owner was out
Replicating Sheldrake's experiment with Jaytee, Richard Wiseman
Richard Wiseman
Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.Wiseman started his professional life as a magician, before graduating in Psychology from University College London and obtaining a Ph.D...
in 1998 designed four tests for a dog a Austrian television show felt had been successful knowing when its owner would return home. Wiseman ruled out all cues and routines the dog could previously have been picking up. When tested with these controls the dog failed all four tests. JREF investigator Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell is a prominent skeptical investigator of the paranormal. He also works as an historical document consultant and has helped expose such famous forgeries as the purported diary of Jack the Ripper. In 2002 he was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr...
writes that "the experiments suggested "that selective memory, multiple guesses and selective matching could often have sufficient scope to give an owner the impression of a paranormal effect."
In the media
Pet psychics appear regularly in fiction and science fiction, such as the hit movie Ace Ventura: Pet DetectiveAce Ventura: Pet Detective
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is a 1994 American comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and starring Jim Carrey. It co-stars Courteney Cox, Tone Loc, Sean Young and former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino....
or Dr. Doolittle's books and movies. Amongst contemporary pet psychics, Sonya Fitzpatrick
Sonya Fitzpatrick
Sonya Fitzpatrick is a British television and radio personality and a pet psychic. She hosted the now-defunct television show, Animal Planet's The Pet Psychic...
with her show The Pet Psychic
The Pet Psychic
The Pet Psychic is an hour-long television program that was broadcast on the Animal Planet network in the United States. The show was created by Yehuda Goldman and co-created by Todd Thompson, and senior broadcast executive Todd Mason, who also served as the shows Executive Producer...
and dog trainer/dog psychologist César Millan with his show Dog Whisperer
Dog Whisperer
Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan is a reality television series that features Cesar Millan's work with problem dogs. In the United States, the program airs exclusively on the Nat Geo WILD channel with season 8 expected to premiere in 2012....
are arguably the best known.
Criticism of pet psychics
The scientific communityScientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
has rejected all claims of psychic phenomena, and no compelling evidence of psychic phenomena has been found. A study using neuroimaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI is a type of specialized MRI scan used to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging...
published in 2008 provides the strongest evidence yet obtained that paranormal mental phenomena do not exist. A study at Bangor University, Wales, of people who hear voices found that fMRI scans of one 'animal communicator,' whilst allegedly hearing the voice of each of ten pets belonging to the research team, showed activity in Heschl's gyrus. When asked to imagine a conversation with each of ten humans, the activity was in a totally different brain area. In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
phenomena." In 1991 a survey of opinion amongst scientists in the National Academy of Sciences, 96% described themselves as "skeptical
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
" of ESP, although 2% believed in psi
Psi (parapsychology)
Psi is a term from parapsychology derived from the Greek, ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul".-Etymology:...
and 10% felt that parapsychological research should be encouraged.
Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell is a prominent skeptical investigator of the paranormal. He also works as an historical document consultant and has helped expose such famous forgeries as the purported diary of Jack the Ripper. In 2002 he was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr...
believes that cold reading
Cold reading
Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, illusionists, and con artists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do...
is the reason why so many pet psychics look like they are communicating with animals. Watching pet psychics like Gerri Leigh and Animal Planet
Animal Planet
Animal Planet is an American cable tv specialty channel that launched on October 1, 1996. It is distributed by Discovery Communications. A high-definition simulcast of the channel launched on September 1, 2007.-History:...
's Sonya Fitzpatrick
Sonya Fitzpatrick
Sonya Fitzpatrick is a British television and radio personality and a pet psychic. She hosted the now-defunct television show, Animal Planet's The Pet Psychic...
work in front of an audience, their conversations with the animals appear to be impressive until you understand that "it is the pet owners, not the pets themselves, who "validate" the pronouncements."
Linguistic professor Karen Stollznow
Karen Stollznow
Karen Stollznow is an Australian writer, linguist, podcaster and skeptic. She is a columnist for both Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines and is host on two different skeptic podcasts...
writing for The Skeptic
Australian Skeptics
The Australian Skeptics is a non-profit organisation based in Australia which investigates paranormal and pseudoscientific claims using scientific methodologies.-History:...
magazine tested a pet psychic with a cat named Jed. Not only was the psychic "completely inaccurate in her reading of Jed’s age, place of birth, background, behavior, health, and my health..." she was unable to tell that Jed was not her cat. Stollznow concludes that "language is human-species specific. We don’t and can’t “know” what animals think."
See also
- AnimatismAnimatismAnimatism is a term coined by British anthropologist Robert Marett to refer to "a belief in a generalized, impersonal power over which people have some measure of control"...
- AnimismAnimismAnimism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....
- "Eliza" Thornberry from the cartoon The Wild Thornberries
- Horse whisperer
- Mentalist
- Mr. Ed
- Nature worshipNature worshipNature worship describes a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on natural phenomenon. A nature deity can be in charge of nature, the biosphere, the cosmos or the universe. Nature worship can be found in panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism,...
- Psychic detectivePsychic detectiveA psychic detective is defined as a person who investigates crimes by using their claimed paranormal psychic abilities. A number of people claim they have psychic abilities that have allowed them to assist police in solving kidnapping and murder cases, or locating a corpse...
- Psychic readingPsychic readingA psychic reading is a specific attempt to discern information with clairvoyance and the resulting statements made during such an attempt. The term is commonly associated with paranormal-based consultation given for a fee in such settings as over the phone, in a home, or at psychic fairs...
External links
- http://www.companionanimalhealing.com Companion Animal Healing & Communication