Animal Navigation poster for RIN19
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Summary of ideas Spring 2014
Intro I have put together this article to spell out some of the thinking that I have come across recently. A lot is highly contentious (such as Torsion waves) but as we struggle to understand how animals (and humans) navigate effortlessly, ideas which seemed so strong suddenly seem to be beset by impossible conditions. We…
Humans and Horses
It is clear that animals which humans domesticated were all chosen because they were amenable to domestication. This happened at several sites all over the world and the animals were mostly the same. Dogs and horses seem to have always been the top of the list. The cow is an unlikely animal to have chosen…
Dowsing Dolphins by Jim Lyons
Background From time to time, I scan the literature to find out the latest ideas on animal behaviour but navigation in particular. Despite numerous papers involving the tracking of birds, hamsters, fish etc., I struggle to find the word that readers of this Journal use all the time – Dowsing. Since the first recording of…
Physical limits to magneto genetics – Markus Meister
AbstractThis is an analysis of how magnetic fields affect biological molecules and cells. It was prompted by a series of prominent reports regarding magnetism in biological systems. The first claims to have identified a protein complex that acts like a compass needle to guide magnetic orientation in animals (Qin et al., 2016). Two other articles report…
Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis
There has always been huge uncertainty as to how migrating animals learn where to go. Â 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…
Homing Snails
We recently posted an article by Antonio Nafarrate which refers to Jill Moss’s snails and their ability to home. Since then there has been much in the UK papers about snails having a strong sense of place and returning to it (there was an article in the Daily Telegraph, “why slugs and snails thrown over…