The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.

Information icon.svg Campaigning is open for the RationalWiki 2024 Board of Trustees election.

Animal communicator

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 02:45, 24 August 2017 by WonderKirby577 (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Putting the psycho in
Parapsychology
Icon psychic.svg
Men who stare at goats
By the powers of tinfoil
Style over substance
Pseudoscience
Icon pseudoscience.svg
Popular pseudosciences
Random examples

Animal communicators are people who claim to be able to psychically communicate with animals. They're also known as animal psychics or pet psychics Like all paranormal and psychic claims, it's just hogwash.

Animal communicators use similar techniques as mediums such as cold reading, except that they have an easier job since the animal can't speak up and say "hey, that's wrong!" All of the information provided by animal communicators fall in three categories:

  1. What the owner wants to hear, such as "he loves you" and "he's happy".
  2. Open doors like "the horse wants more hay" or "the dog likes to play outside".
  3. Unverifiable claims like "the goat has bad gas".

Unlike mediums—which takes real skill and manipulation, and are all frauds—you can probably delude yourself in believing you really are communicating with the animals, so not all animal communicators are necessarily frauds (which is probably the only good thing anyone can say about them).

Unfortunately these people can actually harm animal welfare. Take for example this video:

Psychic: It's a little too hot in here all the time

Owner: He is hot?! Oh… I was always worried about him being cold!

Psychic: No, he's a little hot.

The owner is not exactly acting on the best of information here.

See also

References