{"id":802,"date":"2009-07-14T07:37:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T11:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stacyhorn.com\/unbelievable\/?p=802"},"modified":"2009-11-11T09:48:51","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T13:48:51","slug":"photographs-from-the-cat-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/?p=802","title":{"rendered":"Photographs from the Cat Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1950&#8217;s, while he was working at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, Dr. Karlis Osis conducted two experiments with cats. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t study these experiments, and what I know of them I got from Gaither Pratt&#8217;s book, <em>Parapsychology: An Insider&#8217;s View of ESP<\/em>.  In the first experiment, the cat was offered two &#8220;equally attractive food pans,&#8221; while the experimenter, &#8220;screened from the cat&#8217;s sight, decided on some random basis which should be the &#8216;correct&#8217; pan for each trial.&#8221; \u00a0(More below.)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-803\" title=\"espcat\" src=\"http:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/espcat.jpg\" alt=\"espcat\" width=\"531\" height=\"406\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-804 alignleft\" title=\"osiscat\" src=\"http:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/osiscat.jpg\" alt=\"osiscat\" width=\"289\" height=\"343\" \/><br \/>\nThe experimenter (Osis) &#8220;concentrated upon having the cat make the same choice.&#8221;  The results were &#8220;not spectacular,&#8221;  but still better than chance.  The problem was Osis couldn&#8217;t say whether it was ESP in the cats or &#8220;some essential psi element which the experimenter was contributing to the man-cat relationship.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>So they (Osis and Esther Bond) set up a second experiment, and this time neither experimenter knew the correct choice.  One pan had food and one didn&#8217;t.  A fan was installed to blow the scent of the food away.  This experiment didn&#8217;t provide striking results either, in fact even less than the first experiment, but there was some evidence of ESP.<\/p>\n<p>Not to be critical, but these experiments sound pretty crude today.  I imagine better experiments could be conducted now.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sheldrake.org\/homepage.html\">Rupert Sheldrake<\/a> has done a lot of work with animals, which he has written about in his book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=0609805339\/echonewyorkcitysA\">Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals<\/a> (1999).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1950&#8217;s, while he was working at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, Dr. Karlis Osis conducted two experiments with cats. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t study these &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6u-cW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/1455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}