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Kaushik Patowary
Jul 30, 2019
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Some animals have the instinctive ability to predict changes in the weather. Frogs croak when a storm is approaching, birds return to their nest, cows, sheep and ants become restless.
George Merryweather, a 19th century English doctor and inventor, observed that medicinal leeches he used to work with behaved differently when the weather got worse. Housed in small glass jars of water, the leech would lie relaxed at the bottom when the weather was fine, but several hours before the skies became cloudy and the wind started blowing, the sucker would show signs of agitation. If rain was coming, it would move out of the water, and if a storm was imminent, a leech would curl itself into a ball and remain thus for its duration. Once the weather had settled down, the leech would return to the bottom of the bottle.