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Olfactory landmarks and path integration converge to form a cognitive spatial map
This paper on olfactory landmarks is interesting as it covers the idea that the distinctive smell of a place can help navigation by creating a new landmark for helping an animal navigate. The recognition of a spatial landmark by its sensory features poses a problem for neural circuits. Fischler-Ruiz, et al. show how this problem…
Bar-tailed Godwit’s sense of direction
The bar tailed Godwit is about 37/39cms (15ins) long which summers in the arctic yet migrates to warmer locations during the winter. These include astonishing non-stop flights over the Pacific to New Zealand every Northern winter. As you can see from the tracks, you will see it flies in a perfect straight flight from the Arctic…
Some thoughts on The Migration of the Arctic Terns by George Nissen
See www.arctictern.info see the google tour You can see the tern’s tracks from their breeding grounds in Greenland in the Arctic (in yellow) to their wintering grounds in Antarctica. The white track is the averaged return flight. The terns dawdle down to their Antarctic wintering grounds looking for food etc. The Earth’s Prevailing winds. Note:…
Our co-editor Antonio Nafarrate has recently written these remarks
Following the 2016 Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) Conference on “Animal Navigation”, Dr. Painter claims that after some 50 years of work, the Magnetic “mechanism is not fully understood”. In my judgment, it will never be, because there is no such mechanism. The Geomagnetic Field (GMF) is only a minor perturbation to the true navigational…
Albatross Navigation
The Albatross that ranges over huge areas of the South Atlantic Region in overcast weather where sun clues are seldom available to return to their breeding islands such as Crozet in the South Atlantic, work done by Bonadonna et al in 2004 shows that manipulating the albatrosses by altering their magnetic environment made no difference…
Ways pigeons might home
Here is a fascinating YouTube video discussing different ways a pigeon might home. The people shown here are our heroes, who are really important people in the animal navigation world and especially in Pigeon navigation. You will find Tim Guildford at Oxford University, who believes that pigeons follow landmarks, The Wiltchokos who believe in magnetic…