Can your dog or a passing flock of birds predict an incoming storm? Is there any scientific research to substantiate those claims? And even more interestingly, if animals can predict the weather, do we stop watching the weatherman and start observing the behaviors of animals at the zoo or in our own backyards?

an albatross
Tui De Roy/Minden Pictures/Getty Images
Birds, like the albatross, can be greatly affected by changes in the weather. So can they predict when the next storm will hit?

The implications of such a revelation would surely have a huge impact on people's day-to-day lives. Even more so, these predictions would be especially valuable during catastrophic events like earthquakes, tidal waves, or a one-in-a-million natural disaster, like the tsunami that smashed into Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004.

One of the things we will examine is a widely observed (though scientifically unproven) phenomenon -- even though the tidal wave killed more than 200,000 people, almost no wild animals perished (with the exception of caged or confined animals within the wave's path). Observers report that the animals seemed to have some warning, whether by several hours or just seconds, that allowed them, and the people who heeded those warnings, the chance to find safety.
 

Can a look say it all?
Most claims of animals predicting weather relate to behavioral changes. However, some animals' appearances cause people to wonder if they might be looking at a living, breathing Doppler radar system.

One of these creatures is the banded woolly bear caterpillar. Some people believe this furry insect, which blossoms into a tiger moth in spring, can predict the severity of the coming winter. According to folklore, if the caterpillar's center brown stripe is long, winter won't be too harsh. If the two black stripes running on either side are longer than the center stripe, batten down the hatches.

So does this caterpillar have an inborn ability to gauge the strength of upcoming seasons? Not at all. A scientist who studied these creatures for years eventually scrapped his entire research project. He found one group of woolly bear caterpillars living near a second group of woolly bear caterpillars. The physical appearances of the two groups completely contradicted each other, thus discrediting their predictive look [source: Rozell].

Let's continue on and look closely at this animal phenomenon to see if there's any fact behind the fiction.­ ­

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