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Animals finding their way home

jmhite

New Blood
J
Joined
Jan 6, 2007
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Has any study been done with the stories of animals traveling long distances to get back home?

I was just reading a series of stories in The New Book of Lists about this. Perhaps the stories are exagertions or the people were confused about the animal being their lost pet.

Most interesting are the stories of an animal going long distances to a new home that they had never been to. IF these stories are true, then the animal is using some sense we do not know about to find their human family.

I lost a cat after a move to a new house. A month after he was lost I was visiting the former residence to take care of a friend's cat. While there I found my lost cat hiding in a drainage ditch. He was scared and really hungry, but he had found his way back to that house. He was born at that house and had never been taken anywhere else. The two houses were 3 miles apart and separated by a canyon and a busy highway.

Most of these stories are anedoctal and it would seem a cruel test to strip away pets from their owners to see if they ever show up.
 
My sister in law sold an adult Malamute to somebody moving to Colorado. Two weeks later it was back to her house in San Diego, with well worn foot pads. Too bad nobody had any contact info on the buyer. We don't know if the dog jumped out of the truck in the suburbs, or escaped after making it to Denver. I can understand the buyer not calling to say "You dog is gone. I'm a lousy pet owner..."
 
jmhite said:
Has any study been done with the stories of animals traveling long distances to get back home?

I was just reading a series of stories in The New Book of Lists about this. Perhaps the stories are exagertions or the people were confused about the animal being their lost pet.

Most interesting are the stories of an animal going long distances to a new home that they had never been to. IF these stories are true, then the animal is using some sense we do not know about to find their human family.

I lost a cat after a move to a new house. A month after he was lost I was visiting the former residence to take care of a friend's cat. While there I found my lost cat hiding in a drainage ditch. He was scared and really hungry, but he had found his way back to that house. He was born at that house and had never been taken anywhere else. The two houses were 3 miles apart and separated by a canyon and a busy highway.

Most of these stories are anedoctal and it would seem a cruel test to strip away pets from their owners to see if they ever show up.
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I'd like to know more about this, too.

There are obvious plausible explanations, not the least of which is that it's not the original animal. eg: parents put an animal down, say it's lost during the move, and buy a replacement - young kids don't know the difference, but will tell the story of how Fido followed them from New York to LA.

James Randi has an anecdote about how he lost a favourite cat while on vacation as a kid, renting a cabin by a lake 300km from his home. A week later, the cat showed up on their breakfast table at home. The explanation: the family a few houses down the street rented the exact same cabin starting the day they left it, and 'adopted' the stray cat that showed up, taking it home with them at the end of the week's vacation. However, he didn't have an explanation until the neighbours put up lost cat signs. Fortunately, things got straightened out.

Anyway, I'll be monitoring this thread, because this is one of those 'plausible' topics within Skepticism. I can see that some animals could very well have found their way back to a familiar location, given enough time and a relatively short distance, and a lot of luck. But some of the stories sound utterly impossible. Cat lost in India, shows up in New Hampshire. Suuuure it did.

I lost a cat while living in the West End - it jumped out a 3rd story window - and searched for weeks. A month later, I found it while jogging in Stanley Park. She was skinny and her fur was a mess, but it was a happy reunion. The odds of us crossing paths over a mile away from my apartment were *very* slim, but not zero.
 
There are cases better documented and in my opinion much more exciting than pets, eg turtles (like the one in my avatar) finding their way back to the beach where they were born.
 
We lost our cat once. We'd left her with a family while we were away on vacation. She escaped from their house and hid in their yard for a couple of weeks. Then we visited again and out came the cat, somehow skinny, out of a woodshed. But she did not try to return to our place, which is only 10 kilometers away.
My mother, however, tells a story of a cat returning from a greater distance. My great-grandmother kept cats in the yard. When they became too many, she would take one or two and put them on a cargo train. Then one day she put the smartest old cat on the train. Weeks later, the cat returned. Several days after that she died from exhaustion.
We've transported many cats away from home (all but the current one were unable to live in an apartment in a civilized manner). None have returned.
 
There are more than one explanation here. Of course, some animals have navigational systems. Migratory birds, homing pigeons, birds that forage hundreds (even thousands) of miles from their nesting areas. Some whales range the entire globe, yet show up at the mating grounds with (almost) clock regularity.

Others have the ability to recognize their spawning-place, but rely on chance to happen on the right river-mouth (e.g salmon).

Then there are pets. Cats certainly navigate over large areas (three miles as mentioned above will certainly be within the ranging area of a tom-cat. So many traditional stories of cats showing up at their old home after moved with the family could easily be explained by the cat ranging from the new home and coming upon known territory. I'd guess this could happen for ranges up to ten miles or so.

Then. there are other explanations:

- Chance. If you calculate the ratio of cats lost to the number that showed up somewhere, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd find that even supposing them wandering off in random directions, a fair number lost (killed, found new homes, etc.), the number hitting close enough to home to find the last few miles by local knowledge, would explain the observations.

- Mistaken identity. Ear tatoos and other ID methods usually get cats returned by finders, so we can assume that the ones claimed to return unaided were mostly not marked. There must have been a number of stray cats arriving at a house, being taken for a lost friend, and not protesting at being fed and treated nicely. After all, how many people can really, rally recognize their cat ofter several months, and allowing for the "returnee " to look quite worn after the assumed trip.

- Fabrication. Parents have cat put down, tell children it has returned to the old home, etc, etc.

Dogs? Dogs are also ranging animals. Those that have any natural instincts left, that is. Especially males.

Hans
 
I notice the OP mentions stories about pets finding their way to places they have never been to. Are there any links to back this up? As is apparent from the other replies, animals finding their way home is fairly common and can have a number of rational explanations. Hell, pigeons can manage it, and cats are way (well, slightly) more intelligent. On the other hand I have never heard of any pet finding it's way to a new house after being left behind, and I would be quite interested to know more, especially since I can't think of any way this would happen, at least for distances greater than maybe 10 miles.
 
Exactly - the stories of an animal making it to a family that has moved and not the place are the most intriguing. What started me thinking about this was a list in The New Book Of Lists in which several stories involved extraordinary distances to a place the animal had never been.

Animals must be using an amazing sense of smell or of some location to be aware of where they are.

I once took my dog to a state park 30 miles from my home. He enjoyed it a lot. A year later I drove past that park entrance - from a different direction than before - and that dog got as excited as if he knew where he was. He barked and danced pointing at the entrance as I drove past.

He has shown a memory of previous walks. Looking in the direction before I turn. Even when we've only been to that place once before.
 
This is not that thrilling, but it seemed amazing at the time. When I was a kid my aunt and uncle owned a little black dashound named Toby. We lived in town and my aunt and uncle lived about 5 miles away out in the country. My aunt and uncle went on vacation and left Toby (with food, water and shelter, of course). A couple of days later Toby was at our doorstep. Now, I'm not sure if he had ever been to our house before. I can't imagine why he would have been. At any rate he was certainly never walked there. I find it impressive that he found his way all by himself.
 
blutoski said:
James Randi has an anecdote about how he lost a favourite cat while on vacation as a kid, renting a cabin by a lake 300km from his home. A week later, the cat showed up on their breakfast table at home. ....
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:jaw-dropp Seems a bit drastic! Still - that'll teach it to run away.


;)

When I was a kid, our family went away on vacation and left our Siamese cat with my sister - about a mile away. After a few days it escaped - turned up at the next door neighbor's after nearly a week. A mile isn't that far. Still - pretty good.
 
Sometimes they get lucky. Probably most of the time, there is a simpler explanation like it is not their animal but one that resembles it.
 
One of our neighbours sold my siamese cat when I was a kid, when we were all away on holiday.

The neighbour who had volunteered to feed him was distraught thinking he had been killed or something. I don't know how the truth came out, but remembering the neighbour she probably bragged to my mum about it. She had previously told my little sister and I that she would poison him and throw the body in our garden.

He came back home after a bit, thankfully.
 
jmhite said:
Exactly - the stories of an animal making it to a family that has moved and not the place are the most intriguing.
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I agree these would be intriguing. Do you have any evidence this has ever happened? Judging from the other responses in this thread I am not the only one that has never heard of this happening.
 
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bruto said:
I knew a cat that made a return journey of over 50 miles after being given away. It took him about a month.
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Or the people you gave it to got tired of it after a month and dropped it off on your doorstep....
 
tsg said:
Or the people you gave it to got tired of it after a month and dropped it off on your doorstep....
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No. The cat, which had lived semi-feral in the country before, and was adopted by a city person, got loose and ran away the first day. When he reappeared he looked just about how you'd expect a cat to look after a month on the road, sick, scrawny and injured. He was adopted by another family in a more rural setting and did not run away again.
 
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