Shar-Pei Chosen to Predict Asteroids, Earthquakes

Pug Ugly Successfully Predicted Earth's Near Miss

A Shar-Pei female named Pug Ugly has been declared the winner of a joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey contest to find an animal to predict earthquakes and asteroids passing close to earth. The four-year-old dog will receive a $2 million lifetime consulting contract to the two Federal agencies.

The selection was announced over the weekend after statisticians said Pug Ugly's prediction of an asteroid pass last week met their statistical predictive threshold for animals. Federal officials declined to reveal the margin of error of the statistical threshold, other than to say it was "similar to your typical national political poll."

Astronomers discovered the asteroid, named 2004 FH and about 100 feet in diameter, on March 15. It passed within 26,500 miles of Earth on Thursday. It was Earth's closest known asteroid encounter. Geo-stationary weather satellites orbit earth at an altitude of 22,300 miles.

"According to my daily log, Puggie first began warning us of an asteroid on February 27," said Julian Griswold, a bookkeeper with an excavation company in Lexington, Virginia. "We called NASA right away and then I saw on television last week that there was that asteroid."

Pug Ugly lives with Griswold and her two teen-age children in an apartment in Lexington. The dog helps supplement the family's income with a part-time job helping Lexington's public works department find underground gas lines prior to digging. The dog also helps Griswold's employer lay out underground gas and water lines in new housing developments. She is a frequent consultant to utilities in legal disputes involving the location of underground utility lines.

Pug Ugly successfully predicted the devastating earthquake in Iran last December that leveled the ancient city of Bam. She also gave advance warning of a January storm of micro-earthquakes in central New Mexico and a series of minor temblors on California's San Andreas fault last October.

Griswold said her contract with the two Federal Agencies, which she signed Sunday, prohibits her from disclosing what means Pug Ugly uses to communicate her warnings to Griswold family members. "I can only say that she is very expressive and uses all the means that any energetic canine that is fully engaged with her people might use," Griswold said. She declined to say whether Pug Ugly's enormous folds of loose skin play any role in the communications.

The Shar-Pei had its origins in China and is famous for folds of loose skin that give it a physiognomy of enormous wisdom and the weight of the world pressing down.

Griswold said the Federal contract will pay her in ten $200,000 annual installments, regardless of how long Pug Ugly lives. When asked how the contract might change her family's life she said, "We'll probably get a larger apartment so Puggie can have her own bedroom and cable TV. And a large SUV for her, too."

A Congo African Gray parrot named N'kisi and reputed to have a vocabulary of 750 human words and substantial telepathic skills, had been widely expected to win the NASA-USGS search. He dropped out of the race in January to become an advisor to Senator John Kerry in his presidential election bid.

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