The evolution of psychic ability

The idea of psychic abilities is an exciting one, and I'd love to believe in it.  Even being able to read someone's mind, or tell the future, 1/100 of the time would make me feel like one of the X-men, or at least a student in Xavier's School for (somewhat) Gifted Youngsters.

One way to examine a belief is to pretend, every once in a while, that it is real, and implications of the belief will often reveal themselves to you like images on an old Polaroid picture.  When I assume that psychic abilities are real, I suddenly have a million questions.  For instance, where does natural selection play a part in the development of these senses?  How, exactly, do they interact with our existing senses, and the functions of the body?

A big red question mark that appears in my mind is, why would an ability or sense that would be very handy in survival be restricted to so few people, and hidden so deep as to be nearly inaccessible to the rest of us?  There are no other senses that do this.  Sight isn't something that's restricted to a small percentage of the population, and then disbelieved by the rest of us.  Hearing isn't an exclusive club.  So, why would extra sensory perception, which would make important decisions so much easier, alert us when someone/something means to harm us, and perhaps even let us know which mate would make the best offspring (yes, we are animals, get over it), be so poorly developed after so many millions of years of evolution?  I would expect something so handy to be prominent enough in our perception that nobody would have the luxury to disbelieve in it.

I'm suddenly curious if anyone has tried to breed animals for psychic ability.  Perhaps mice.  If the mouse pushes on the card with a triangle, he gets a treat, and if he pushes the card with three wavy lines, then audio of a cat yowling is played.  Which would be unpleasant for a mouse, of course.  Perhaps we could coax the effect out.  I'm going to comment in Dean Radin's blog about this.

Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way.  Maybe psychic ability doesn't have a strong selection pressure.  Maybe knowing the future makes people worry, and then become ill.  Maybe knowing what other people are thinking about someone will make them want to kill themselves.

We have to wonder why nature would keep such secrets, and what good it could have done us throughout the development of our species.  And we also, as always, have to consider that this effect may not exist in the first place, in which case all of this would make a lot more sense.  And, at the end of the day, all I really want is for the world to make sense.

Yeah, I know.  Good luck.  Thanks.