How Pet Psychics Work

Many pet psychics describe animal communication as a gift they discovered at an early age. For example, Sonya Fitzpatrick, host of Animal Planet's "The Pet Psychic," describes developing friendships with animals due to a childhood hearing loss. Other psychics began exploring it as adults — sometimes after watching Fitzpatrick's TV show. While some psychics describe an intuitive understanding of how to talk to animals, others say they learned from books or workshops.

Regardless of differences in when and how pet psychics developed their skills, most describe the same basic steps for talking to animals. Many cite J. Allen Boone's "Kinship with All Life," originally published in 1954, as the source for their methods. Here's what typically happens:

To some animal lovers, this process seems to make sense. But the idea of using energy to communicate with animals can be controversial. Scientists have not found conclusive evidence of:

In addition, the energy that pet psychics describe can travel instantaneously over any distance and in any direction. Scientists have not discovered electromagnetic energy that behaves this way.

Pet psychics also make several assumptions about animals' self-awareness and intelligence. We'll look at those in more detail next.

In "What the Animals Tell Me," Sonya Fitzpatrick describes numerous psychic experiences with animals. In her anecdotes, she describes animals as surprisingly intelligent and emotionally complex. They're a lot like people in animals' bodies. During her sessions, animals remember events from long past. They experience and vocalize emotions and reflect on their feelings. Other psychics tell similar stories. According to pet psychics, animals are conscious, self-aware and able to think and experience emotions the way humans do.

Many people have seen their pets behave in a way that suggests that they experience emotions. For example, some dogs whimper when their owners leave the house, and some cats seem jealous of other animals. But scientists haven't come to a consensus about whether these are indicators of true emotion. Emotions can be very difficult to define — philosophers, psychiatrists and medical doctors don't always agree on exactly what they are or how they work in humans. Animals cannot describe what they feel the way people can, so it's even more difficult to study their emotions.

In addition, hormone and neurotransmitter levels can make it appear as though an animal is experiencing emotions. But these chemicals do not necessarily create emotions. For example, in most mammals, hormones like oxytocin typically promote attachment between mothers and their children. Because of this, an attentive mother dog might appear to love her puppies. But, she might not be able to interpret her need to feed, bathe and care for her offspring as love. For this reason, many scientists are reluctant to use animal behavior as proof of emotional capacity.

However, research suggests that animals do experience emotions like joy, anger and grief. They also feel pain and experience stress. Neuroscientist Jaak Panskipp has conducted experiments that suggest that animals can feel other emotions as well, as noted in a Psychology Today article. According to Panskipp, the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a primitive area of the brain, produces basic emotional effects in all mammals, including humans. These include:

Panskipp also believes the PAG creates other emotions, like the desire to be nurtured and to care for others.

In the next section we'll look at how animals deal with emotions.

Some of Panskipp's work is controversial, but the idea that animals experience emotions seems to be moving into the mainstream. However, there is a difference between feeling an emotion and being able to think about or analyze that emotion. A puppy might be afraid of its overly rambunctious littermates, but it probably does not have the level of reasoning necessary to blame its adult skittishness on that experience. Even scientists like Panskipp, who promote the idea that animals have feelings, doubt that they have the intellectual capacity to think about their feelings.

Pet psychics and scientists also differ in their thoughts on animal consciousness, or potential for higher reasoning and self-awareness. Pet psychics also describe animals as having identities that are distinct from the animals around them. In other words, they are self-aware. As with human consciousness, animal consciousness is not entirely understood. Scientists do not entirely agree on whether animals are conscious or to what level they are self-aware. Some animals show signs of consciousness, such as recognizing themselves in the mirror or reacting to the death of other animals. But, scientists have not yet found proof that animals are as completely self-aware as pet psychics describe them to be.

Pet psychics' portrayals of animals and their methods for communicating with them are scientifically questionable. For this reason, many people view pet psychics with skepticism. Some claim that apparently successful pet psychics aren't psychic at all -- they're just practicing cold reading.

Cold reading — sometimes used to explain ESP, tarot reading and fortunetelling — is a method for extracting personal information. Skeptics claim that all psychics are cold readers and do not have paranormal abilities. Cold readers encourage the person receiving the reading to provide all the details. The resulting reading can be very convincing.

A cold reader claiming to be a pet psychic would probably have a good knowledge of human psychology and animal behavior. Keeping that knowledge in mind, they would:

By successfully applying the principles of cold reading, a person can appear to be genuinely psychic. But cold reading does not explain pet psychics' apparent success stories. Many pet psychics claim that they have found missing pets, curbed behavior problems or helped heal sick or injured animals. Skeptics often claim that these successes are really coincidence. Skeptics also claim that psychics supplement their cold reading skills by telling pet owners what they want to hear — that misbehaving pets will shape up, lost pets will come home and deceased pets are in a better place.

Regardless of whether they use paranormal abilities or cold-reading techniques, pet psychics have grown in popularity over the last few years. This may be part of an overall trend of increased spending on pets. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, U.S. pet owners spent $123.6 billion on their pets in 2021, up from $103.6 billion in 2021.

Check out the links that follow for more information about animals, paranormal activity, cold reading and related topics.