The Bell Tolls For Thee

At a nursing home in Ohio, Scamp, a schnazuer roams the halls comforting patients. But when he goes into a patient's room and barks, or paces, that's bad news. That means the poor old person is about to die. In the three years that Scamp has lived at this nursing home, he's correctly predicted just about all of the 40 or so deaths.

He is so reliable that when he goes into someone's room and starts acting this way, the nursing home staff will call the family and say "get here fast."



A cat named Oscar, with a similar predictive ability lives at a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island.



Now this may seem crazy or made up or coincidental, but since there are no coincidences, I'd like to offer an explanation.
Dogs are proven to be valuable service animals to diabetics and epileptics. They can sense or smell a change in the body's chemistry, and use that to predict an incident (blood sugar drop or seizure). I believe the same general thing is at work here.