Where were you when the tsunami hit?
I was in Yala the moment the tsunami hit. I saw some unusual behavior from the animals. First in the morning around 8 o’clock I saw a group of banded storks and black-headed ibis flying like they were confused. I didn’t think at this point this can be a very dangerous thing, because I have seen them do this when they were frightened by another animal or something else. So I thought they were frightened because of something and flying to a safe area. And also, in the morning I saw several, three or four frogs. I saw them just going away from the hotel or leaving their roost. These [particular frogs] are nocturnal and to see them during the daylight was a bit unusual. It still didn’t strike me that this could be a [sign of] danger.

There are a lot of peacocks in the area and you can hear them call. It’s a very loud call and you can hear it from a distance. And I didn’t hear any peacocks call. I thought it was unusual, but I didn’t put it all into one picture. My brain didn’t get the whole picture and get the warning earlier.

How do you think birds and other animals knew that danger was approaching?
I think in the case of birds they use the geomagnetic field a lot, especially when they are migrating or traveling from place to place, but I don’t think … changes of the geomagnetic field happened [here] because it’s just that quick. There’s a good chance that seismic waves came through … the ground and the animals heard this. These seismic waves can create the first or second tremors in a distant area. So when you consider the intensities, it’s very possible to get these seismic waves in this area, and some people say they felt these kind of tremors before the tsunami. … So maybe [those] animals felt these seismic waves beforehand and knew there was some kind of disaster coming and they decided to move away.

I think that some animals felt it differently or some depended on other animals to give them warning to move away. I think animals like big mammals felt it earlier, because I was washed by the wave and ended up in the jungle. I didn’t see any big mammals such as elephants, water buffalo, cheetah, or spotted deer that are normally around. I didn’t see any, which was a bit unusual, so that means maybe they prepared. And we know animals like elephants use infrasound to communicate with each other, especially the low-frequency sounds that can carry through the earth. There’s a very good possibility they heard the sound, and maybe they gave an alarm to the other animals also.

Do you think all the animals knew that something was happening?
With my experience I knew that some animals felt this one differently or they didn’t get a warning, and they waited until the tsunami came. On that morning, about 15 minutes before the wave came, I photographed and saw some bats roosting on a palm tree. I saw a lot of birds in the lagoon in front of the restaurant at the hotel and I was watching these birds while having my breakfast. All of a sudden, around 9 o’clock these birds took off. And with my experience I knew this was not because of a predator or something else. Because birds on the boat side of the lagoon took off all of a sudden. This creates curiosity in me, that this could be something big here.

All of a sudden I saw some water coming through the mouth of the lagoon mouth, and it occurred to me that if the water came out this far, and the beaches are 100, 150 meters (328, 492 feet) away from the hotel, that it should be a big wave. I then stood up and shouted, “Tidal wave!”

How did you know that it was a tidal wave or tsunami?
The birds’ [behavior] was an alarm and I was knowledgeable enough to identify it as an alarm call of a bird or group of birds. It gave me a half of second, maximum half a second, before the wave started coming. When I saw the water coming through the estuary, knowing the area, I knew that this would be a big wave. So I started running and I gave an alarm call to the people, and most of the people started running at that point.

I should be thankful to the birds for saving my life, and because I gave the alarm call to the other people, maybe another few people survived because of that.

Have you heard of other incidents in which animals gave warnings to humans?
There are some incidents or records that some domestic animals also behaved very peculiarly. One of my friends told me there was a person who ran behind their dog because it started running away from the ocean. He ran to catch the dog, and both man and dog were saved, because this dog was running away from the wave. And things like that. We are not studying the animals well to get what they are trying to tell us. And now we have been neglecting these animals and we have lost our bond. I think we should communicate to each other … the animals still do, we are just ignoring them. So if we study them more and learn about their alarm calls, we will be safer.

I think all the animals benefited from each other because I think some animals felt this disaster before others, so they gave an alarm call to the others. And working as a unit, they managed to survive. I don’t think that animals were addressing only other animals. They must be giving the warning to us. … If we still manage to identify these other warnings from these animals, I think we have a pretty good chance of surviving a disaster like this or for example … global warning, there’s a lot of thought going behind that, things like that. So what I think we should do is we should study these animals more … animals and the other wildlife, plants and things like that. So we can have a better understanding of these animals and their behaviors. So changing of behaviors, we should see what caused it, and then we can have a better alarm system than this.

Did you find any dead animals during your search?
What was astonishing was that we didn’t come across any dead bodies of animals, except one fish. It’s remarkable that with so many human casualties, the wildlife could have escaped unscathed.

Why do you think there were no dead animals? How do you think they escaped?
It was very clear that there were no dead animals because some of the bigger mammals that go there, the wild pig, the water buffalo … [their] corpses would have been very evident visually. Also, as you progress to the fourth day, if there were dead animals, the bad smell from the carcasses would have wafted into the breeze and would have been picked up. So it is very much a confirmed fact that the animals escaped the tsunami.

To move to your next question, how did they escape? There were a number of reasons. First, of course, the density of animals on the coastline was low. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any when the tsunami struck, because we know when one of the naturalists of the game lodge was fleeing, intuitively followed a group of a kind of leaf monkeys. He knew that if he ran behind the monkeys, they would lead him to safety. It seemed like they had an extra warning period of anything from a few seconds to a few minutes or more. And this could be underlain by scientific bases; one could simply be that animals’ hearing is so much more sensitive [than humans']. An animal can hear a dry leaf rustle at 100 meters (328 feet). … As the wave rode into the shore, it is possible that they had just a few seconds of extra warning. The leaf monkeys, the giant squirrels, the lizards, and snakes just had that extra few seconds to run away to safety.

For the other mammals, like elephants, it becomes more interesting. Did they perhaps have several hours of prior notice? We know that elephants communicate using infrasounds. They can communicate by using special nerve centers. … They will stamp on the ground and send seismic waves, and other elephants can pick this up because the soles of their feet have passing corpuscles that are arranged like layers of an onion. These then act like ground listening antennae or receptors. So they take these signals in, and they have a sophisticated neural apparatus for filtering out background noise and filtering what they need to hear, and they amplify that.

One possibility is when the earthquake happened off Sumatra, some of those ground waves were detected by them, giving them a forewarning. Another possibility is as a tsunami wave came in, there would have been some wave energy carried as seismic waves, some as infrasounds, either groundborne or airborne. Animals like elephants could have picked it up. And it’s possible that they gradually moved away. This could be why there weren’t many reports of animals fleeing in a hurry. Other animals like the water monitor — a kind of reptile — and the giant squirrels, who don’t have this sophisticated communication apparatus, would have listened to wavelengths that we hear. But [their hearing] intensity is so accurate that it could have given them that extra five seconds to race up a tree or flee an extra 50 meters (164 feet) inland. At the time [of] the tsunami, that was the difference between life and death.

Do you think animals have a “sixth sense”?
Well, I think unfortunately this sixth sense has been portrayed as some kind of psychic sense or extrasensory perception. I’ve watched elephants using infrasounds. I’ve seen elephants in Yala standing motionless with their trunks on the ground. I’ve seen people coming up to the water hole saying, “It’s just an elephant standing still and motionless,” and they will pass. I’ve realized what the elephant is doing is actually communicating, and I’ve stayed to see what that elephant is communicating with. Five minutes later, I’ve sometimes seen a family herd arriving, and in one case I saw one bull elephant and the two were clearly communicating with each other, because as soon as the other bull emerged out of the forest, there was violent confrontation.

So there’s a lot of field evidence, scientifically proven, that elephants communicate using infrasounds over distances over 40 kilometers (25 miles). It doesn’t mean that [the animal is] psychic, and it could be this kind of thing outside our perception that allows animals to detect danger before we do. There’s a lot of evidence documented that when an elephant is shot in one area, especially in South Africa, elephant herds 30 to 40 kilometers (18 to 25 miles) away have responded with a lot of distress. Just as we will communicate orally in some wavelengths, which you and I can hear, the elephants are communicating in a normal way, but using infrasounds that we can’t hear.

Mammals such as lions are also known to have very sensitive nerve receptors on their feet. So clearly mammals have adaptations for detecting groundborne vibrations. It could be to help them detect prey, or it could be that when one mammal groans and claims its territory, some of the groundborne vibrations travel long distances. Infrasounds do travel long distances and curve around the earth. So we may think its psychic and something to be scoffed [at]. But there probably are very practical, scientific reasons to explain why animals survived the tsunami and humans didn’t.

Perhaps you just didn’t find dead animals? They may have washed out to sea.
It’s certainly a possibility, but it’s just as likely that if animals did die in the tidal wave a portion of those bodies would stay on land. And what we found with humans was that most bodies remained on land and got snagged on bushes and trees and so on. At the Yala Safari Game Lodge, for example, of the 55 people who died, all were eventually recovered. So it’s unlikely that all animals would have been swept offshore.

Do you think reptiles have the ability to sense that danger is coming?
With reptiles, I don’t think much work would suggest that they communicate using infrasounds, not airborne infrasounds, but it’s very clear that they detect seismic or groundborne waves, some of which may be traveling at infrasound wavelengths. One of the naturalists at the game range told me that when he climbed up one of the trees, together with those who were fleeing were snakes and lizards. That’s very interesting, because if they tried to flee from the source of the sound, if it [had been] just a point source of danger, they would have attempted to just run along the ground and then they would have got caught up in the tsunami and we would have found bodies of land monitors that were quite prevalent there. But we didn’t. So it suggests that they could [have] listened three-dimensionally, and gauged that [the danger was] not coming from a point source but … from a very broad front. And of severe magnitude, which meant their best bet for safety was to go straight up.

Why do you think humans don’t have the ability to hear infrasounds?
The evolutionary process worked in such a way that the primates who had binocular vision, who had a greater area of cerebral cortex unit, who had high brain power to use tools and learn agriculture, and who could reproduce very well were able to colonize new habitats and face danger using intelligence as the key tool for survival and as a colonizing tool. The intelligence was so powerful that it meant any losses you made in terms of not having the same auditory range … also not hearing the ultrasound wavelengths, not hearing the infrasound wavelengths … and in terms of our optical apparatus, not seeing in ultraviolet and not seeing in infrared … the advantage of using the brain for three-dimensional thinking, for lateral thinking, for being able to store memories, for being able to anticipate, to be able to premeditate actions — the advantages far offset the disadvantages of using brain power for other resources, and I think this is why the human mammal has evolved as it is. …. As for other mammals, due to various environmental pressures, [they] based their bets on other sensors, perhaps seeing ultraviolet, hearing infrasound, and then they went on a particular evolutionary pathway.

How do you explain the fact that some elephants that were carrying tracking devices did not move great distances prior to the tsunami?
Well, if you were an elephant and you heard these energy waves coming from the sea, and you were a few hundred meters away from the sea, the chances are you thought you were safe where you were. Only the mammals who were able to detect it, who were right on the shoreline, who felt possibly vulnerable, moved away. And if they had a prior warning they would have moved away gradually. I think the data would have been more interesting if the elephant was picked up right on the shoreline than [if] … it actually moved away. It is unusual for elephants to be right on the shoreline. For a large mammal like an elephant, however large it is, the fight-or-flight zone could be just a few tens of meters, so even if the elephants heard the tsunami coming and they were 200 to 300 meters (656 to 984 feet) inland, they wouldn’t have felt threatened because they know it’s coming from the sea and they feel they have 200 to 300 meters between them and the sea. … Chances are that they were on higher ground and had some sort of vantage looking down and they would have felt safe there because they had enough time to react to danger.

So how do elephants figure out that a tsunami or some seismic event is creating a burst of infrasound energy? How do they realize something out of the ordinary is happening?
Well, in terms of the filtering mechanism, it has to do with the brain being highly evolved for listening and sound. … Imagine you and I are in a very crowded park. Music is blaring, there are 100 conversations going on. Not only can I keep a conversation between us going, I can suddenly tune into a conversation at that table or at that table. … If you’re driving through traffic or walking through traffic, if an unfamiliar vehicle toots its horn, you know it’s danger. So it’s much the same thing; we don’t realize we are good at filtering out the noise we don’t want to hear, but still keeping the channel open for something unusual that spikes up, something that potentially warns us of danger. I think for elephants it’s the same way. They can cut out the mundane noise, but listen to something unusual and say, “Hey, what’s that?”

What did you find during your search?
One of the things I noticed was that in all that destruction, I did not see any carcasses on the roadside. When I inquired, it was not as if people moved them. There were really not that many animal casualties. I am talking about domestic animals at this stage. In Sri Lanka, almost every town has a population of stray animals, camels, goats, dogs, pigs, chickens, and cats. I didn’t see any of these animals dead except for those that were tied or in cages, which of course perished.

Once I got the to the national park, it was the same thing. I didn’t see any casualties, which was also verified by park personnel. About 50 visitors died there, but those were the only incidents. And when I went, animals were already moving back. The damage seemed to be mostly to the vegetation, and probably to some of the beachhead. And of course, any kind of human structures that were there, like the park lodge and the cafeteria, that all got destroyed. What we saw when we were going through ecological assessment, for the most part, was that wherever that were natural barriers, for example, sand dunes, the impacts were minimal.

In a sense, the tsunami was entirely a human disaster; it was not too much of an ecological disaster. Of course it washed away some beaches, and in fact some turtles, sea turtles, were carried far inland, you know, like 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in, and these turtles are trying to make [it] back into the sea, so in some cases they had to be carried back and put into the sea.

Where you surprised that you did not find any dead animals?
I was expecting at least SOME casualties. You saw incredible damage, and sometimes you wonder, who could have survived? In hindsight, you shouldn’t be surprised too, because most animals are in tune to their environment. They are always paying attention to what’s going around them, unlike humans — we tend to forget our environment, we get so [pre]occupied and so focused on what we are doing. But for animals, it’s exactly the opposite. That’s how they survive, always paying attention to what is going on. Also, if anything happens that they cannot understand, they take flight. They don’t stop to go close to it, to find out what the hell is going on. Also, their senses are much more highly evolved … their [sense of] smell, their hearing especially, and their eyesight too, in most cases. For instance, when the first wave came and it receded back, opening a kilometer of the coast up to the reef, people went into the sea. No animal would do that, you know? When the second wave came, there were all the people in the sea.

Did you see unusual animal behavior prior to the tsunami?
Half an hour before the tsunami happened, there was an elephant right in front of the hotel, and that is exactly where the waters came. So by the time the waters came, the elephant had moved away — he was way up on the sand dunes, opposite the hotel. Then, another good friend of mine saw [nocturnal] bats flying away, half an hour before the tsunami. And there is another friend of mine who has a house right by the beach, and he has two dogs that go for a run every day. But on that particular day the dogs were not excited at all to go with him. They were very reluctant, and that probably saved his life. So they had the idea that something was not quite right with the sea that day. So … it seems that animals have had better awareness of something not really right. Now, to an extent as if it is a sixth sense is a different story … it is just their sensory perception is so acute.

What kind of heightened senses do you think animals have that allowed them to get an early warning?
I would say it was auditory, because listen to the ocean now: there is a certain sound to it. And when a tsunami happens, I am sure it changes, obviously it has to change, you know, because physical changes happen. But if you don’t have the proper apparatus to notice that change, you’re not going to feel the change. But if you do, you know something’s wrong. When a huge vertical displacement of land mass has happened, which causes a displacement of a huge mass of water, it is making a lot of noise somewhere. So I think most of the animals were responding to sound waves at different registers. As humans our hearing is a narrow band compared to the spectrum of auditory waves — from infrasonic to high frequencies — which we don’t have [the ability to hear].

There are a lot of stories with elephants and dogs. Elephants have incredible hearing at lower registers. Dogs have very keen smell and very good hearing, especially at the higher frequencies. So obviously they had the necessary senses to listen to something and know that there was something not right.

Bats have incredible sensory perception. They communicate by using sonar, they have very good sonar receptions. So obviously they hear intensely. During the tsunami, for instance, they were hearing stuff that we have no clue about.

Do you think animals sent out warnings to other animals or even to humans?
Animals have a very good communication network. In some cases, it is just a few animals that are giving the warning, and I think it is a good enough warning that it goes down the network. And then everyone starts running. Now for instance, there was a nature guide … he knew the best thing to do was to follow the monkeys because they would know the shortest, safest route out of this mess. So that’s what he did, he followed the monkeys, and he saved himself. It would be nice to see how far down the animal kingdom [the line of communication goes] and [at] what point the warning stops. But I know that mammals and birds take a cue from one another.

Why do you think the animals survived?
The simplest explanation is that these animals have a very good, well-developed sense, coupled with an immediate flight response. And that’s a very good combination. The way they respond to information that they get makes them outstanding.

The part of this that makes it such a good story is that we are genetically programmed to believe in supernatural things. In any population no two animals are the same, so [some] elephants had no idea what was going on and they stayed put, but in some areas there are elephants that responded. But the point is, we don’t know this. We don’t have a large enough sample to make a definite conclusion about any of this stuff. Some animals have better developed senses than others. We know there is an information network, but we don’t know if all the animals are responding to the same information, and how they respond. … The day we can really communicate with animals to the extent of language, maybe we will find out. But until then, all of this is going to be at most a best guess.

Do you think we will be able to find out and use animals’ “sixth sense”?
It’s not like tsunamis are happening all over the world, that you can take a bunch of animals and go send them off and then look at them, and, you know, do your observation work, [collect] data, and see how they are responding. I think … people have totally misunderstood the meaning of “sixth sense.”

We always use our senses. I mean, we use dogs for drug sniffing, to find people buried under snow in avalanches; we use pigs to look for truffles; we use elephants for various things. People are not even looking at the senses of animals. Now we want to know: if animals have an additional sense, above and beyond these five senses, [if] they can warn us of events that have not even happened. From what I know, I don’t think they can.

And the thing for me is … that if this idea really catches on, a lot of animals are going to be susceptible to unnecessary research. … The better approach is to pay attention to nature. Tsunamis are a part of this earth’s history. It’s part of this earth’s image and legacy. It’s the same thing with hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanoes, you know? They are bad for us, but they are good for the earth. They are always going to be a part of this earth. Otherwise, if they all of a sudden stop, that is the end of us too.

What we should really pay attention to is what we have learned from this tsunami. And we did learn some very good things. We know natural barriers, they are cost effective, you don’t need to invest a lot money on heavy-duty high-technology equipment that most countries can’t even afford. Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia can’t afford high-tech hearing and listening and satellite, and all this stuff. But natural barriers are there, there is no maintenance, no repairing. And then from this tsunami we know exactly what kind of areas water came through, so don’t have any development happen there … move people away from there. We are supposed to be the more intelligent animals here, right? The more intelligent, the more resilient, the more adaptive. Use these positive abilities to make life safer for humans.

What happened the morning the tsunami hit?
We set out at about 6 a.m. on the morning of December 26. At about 7:30 a.m. we noticed the elephants started to run. Not a single animal would stop. They had their tails raised up and some were running very close to our jeep. We were traveling very slow. All the elephants and wild boars and other animals were all running away from the sea towards Galkanda. I could not imagine what was the cause. Others in the group were asking what was the reason for the animals to run, but we did not know what was happening. By the time we reached the turnoff to Patnamgalla bungalow, we saw a huge wave of water coming from the sea. It was about 30 feet high and was rushing through the trees and uprooting some of them. The huge wave was rolling along very fast. I stopped the jeep and turned it around. We waited for about 15 minutes. Then another wave came. I started the jeep and drove along the road. By this time the wave had receded. There were a lot of fish on the road. We moved them aside with sticks. At that time we heard a hoot from the direction of the bungalow. A jeep that was taking two tourists had toppled by the force of the wave. The driver was clinging onto a branch of a tree. There was no sign of the tourists. The bungalow had been flattened and there was no sight of the occupants. We brought down the driver. He had injuries all over his body.

We put him in a jeep and since that road was impassable, we sent him to Yala through another road. All the traffic that entered from this side had to go through Katagamuwa and Situlpahuwa. After that we hurried away from the place and reached Katagamuwa. Only at Katagamuwa we learned about what had happened. There was no trace of the occupants of the bungalow. Their bodies were never recovered. My brother had a son. His body was recovered the following day, but the body was decomposed. In that water, a body turns black and decomposes immediately.

Why did you think the animals were running away?
I thought that a large number of hunters had come and therefore the animals were running away. There was nothing else I could think of. Every day when I take this route, the animals are there and they don’t pay any attention to us. The visitors in the jeep were … asking whether it was normal for the animals to run away like that. I said it has never happened before and that they must have been disturbed by something. It is my belief that they sensed or felt something, like getting some news. Although we humans did not feel or sense anything, the animals felt it; they smelled something. I have been here more than 40 years; but never have I witnessed anything like this.

How do you think they knew when to run?
It is my belief that the animals either sensed something or felt something. Otherwise they never run like that. Because of this special quality in animals, not a single animal died or was injured. Whatever the scientists may say, the animals were able to sense something or they smelled something. Otherwise they would have perished like the humans. But not a single animal perished in this Yala sanctuary. We go everywhere and we know if there were animals dead. Not a single deer, sambhur, wild boar, tiger, bear, or elephant died here. We saw many dead humans, but we did not see a single dead animal. There were rows of people dead, hundreds of them. Sri Lankans and tourists were among the dead. We stacked the bodies in the vehicles and took them.

Whatever the specialists or experts may say, I say that the animals sensed something. All the animals escaped because they went up towards the hills, the higher land. Towards Sithulpahuwa.

Do you think animals have a “sixth sense?”
It is like this: when it is going to rain, the peacocks, pheasants, and other birds, they sense it, but we humans have not the slightest indication. So similarly, here also they sensed something. You can inquire and see. Not a single animal perished. Human beings, vehicles, and all others were washed away, but no animals were washed away. … I do not know how it happened. It may be they sensed something, they felt some vibration or something. But somehow they knew something was going to happen.

Mysteries and surprises abound in the nocturnal world of Leopards of Yala.

For more than a century, Yala National Park in Sri Lanka has been one of Asia’s most celebrated wildlife preserves, a lush windswept tropical forest rich in rare aquatic birds and abundant with ferocious predators, such as crocodiles and sloth bears. But only in very recent years has Yala’s big cat distinction been brought to light: It contains one of the world’s largest concentrations of leopards. NATURE takes viewers deep into the jungle habitat of these elusive animals, in Leopards of Yala.

Over a period of six years, Jehan Kumara, a businessman from Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo, and Dr. Ravi Samarasinha, a physician from the local countryside, devoted their spare time to tracking leopards in Yala. In the course of their work, they are joined by Scottish cameraman Gordon Buchanan, attracted to Yala by the lure of finding the only big cat he had never captured on film.

To order a copy of Leopards of Yala, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Leopards of Yala was originally posted April 2003.