From the January 2019 Issue of ShowSight. Click To Subscribe.
The world’s first animal website is known for factual information about dogs, including their ‘other senses’ and oddities which science can’t explain.
One of most mysterious is Coral Castle built in the early 1920’s in what was then a remote area of southern Florida. The closest town was optimistically named Florida City, Florida (2018 population under 16,000). Today one of the world’s greatest scientific mysteries is just a mildly interesting tourist attraction.
The man who created the inexplicable was Edward Leedskalnin. He was not covered by the press back then because no one would have believed Coral Castle was real and there were no photographs to back up the impossible. So it was in virtual obscurity that a physically unimpressive man only five feet tall created a living mystery. He “built” Coral Castle over a period of 28 years, from 1923 until he died alone, unheralded, in 1951.
But Edward Leedskalnin may have proved what some dog owners know and a phenomenon proven by migrating birds. And did we mention the “Lassie Come Home” stories based on their unerring sense of direction? There are hundreds of documented cases of dogs (and cats) finding their family that moved to a distant state! You may want to explore the science of Ley Lines.
So who was this guy (who didn’t own a dog)? Research reveals he was born in 1887 in Latvia. Several sources report (after the fact) that he was from a long line of stonemasons and came to America in 1913 after suffering a shattered romance. In 1919 Leedskalnin moved to Florida where he survived a bout of tuberculosis through treatment with magnets. There is an alternative medicine story there, one proven effective by horses and dogs but that’s for another time…what may be significant is the power of magnets is still being explored and we would not be the first to wonder if magnetic energy could have been used in building Coral Castle.
Even today there is no documentation on how Coral Castle was built but as a native-born Floridian I can tell you it is real, a monument to physics we have yet to understand in the 21st Century. We built a hydrogen bomb and put men on the moon but nearly a century ago Leedskalnin discovered the science of sound and the power of magnetics. It is something every dog owner should explore.
No one has anyone ever explained how the little man moved coral 20-ton rocks delivered to him on flatbed trucks in the dead of night. At least “that’s what they say” because again, there is no evidence whatsoever to explain how he unloaded the trucks without a crane or other heavy equipment. None. Not even a wheelbarrow on the premise. Aerial photography confirmed the impossible.
Religious scholars are quick to point out that Tibetan Monks moved boulders with sound—by chanting. Today we have internet but “psychic phenomenon” brings little interest from a society conditioned to 20-second sound-bites and Twitter’s 140-character limit. That said, stay with me as we burn up Facebook’s recently increased 63,206 characters because to understand your dog, you need to understand the power of sound.
Your personal pet knows things the world’s greatest scientists have given up trying to explain. For example, they know elephants communicate through sound that carries between 10 and 20 miles and is “read” through their footpads. Marine biologists have discovered that whales communicate through sound that travels 100 miles underwater! We accept magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as commonplace but we’ve forgotten the power of sound and ignore that which can only be termed a miracle.
The puzzle that is Coral Castle has been put together by dozens of amateur scientists, religious scholars, and others who readily admit they have no explanation! We are fascinated by the pyramids but we refuse to think about how they were built and how those stones fit perfectly. Neither do we want to ponder the massive stone that Leedskalnin made into a gate. It weighs over nine tons but swivels easily. When the gate finally needed repair 30 years after Leedskalnin passed on, they had to call in a giant crane to move it and even with today’s science and technology, engineers could never make it move as weightlessly and effortlessly.
Let this be a reminder that we don’t know what we don’t know. When your dog suddenly “hears something” and barks, don’t automatically scold him, read him carefully. We understand their incredible sense of smell but some dogs are tuned in to things we will never comprehend.
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