Migratory birds navigate with the help of the Earth’s magnetic field, but how do their compasses work? Peter Hore of Oxford University discusses whether quantum coherence and entanglement could be the answer.
Click here for the full article: The Quantum Robin
Animals exhibit remarkable navigation abilities as if they have an internal compass. Head direction (HD) cells encoding the animal’s heading azimuth are found in the brain of several animal species; the HD cell signals are dependent on the vestibular nuclei, where magnetic responsive cells are present in birds. However, it is difficult to determine whether…
How do pigeons navigate? Racing homing pigeons navigate incredible distances with apparent ease. A champion racing pigeon can be released 400 miles from its home loft, in a place it has never been before, and return within 1 day. The last 40 miles of its journey, the bird navigates by sight. But over the other 360…
There has always been huge uncertainty as to how migrating animals learn where to go. The cuckoo is a perfect example, as the newly hatched birds must travel from Europe to The Congo Basin for the winter, but how do they know the way (as their parents departed sometime before and they travel on their…
Recently Prof Kate Jeffery, working with The Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), gave a one day symposium at University College London. Themes• How animals orient – perspectives from ethology and neuroscience • How humans orient – perspectives from cognitive neuroscience • Helping humans orient – perspectives from architecture and design • The future – building a more navigable…
A little navigational help from animals. Tristam Gooley, who is one of our heroes, and a brilliant natural navigator have posted this fascinating link to his web site. You should follow this and delve into his other insights too as surely animals use many of the same clues as the ones that Tristan points out:…
Adelaide Sibeaux 1 , Cait Newport1, Jonathan P. Green1, Cecilia Karlsson 2, Jacob Engelmann 3 & Theresa Burt de Perera1 have recently published a paper showing that fishes as well as other animals use path integration to find their way home. I believe this is very important and probably the main way we navigate. Path integration maybe the way…
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This article was published in Navigation News and is published with permission from the editor and the author. This is a very important piece of work by one of our heroes as it begins to show how magnetic information can be processed by an animals. Cryptochromes look alike a very promising route to understand how animals navigate as well as the quantum aspects covered.
Richard Nissen
Editor