Showcased at the Royal Institute of Navigation is this interesting piece on animal migration.
Maura O’Connor is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. Her first book is: “Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things,” from St. Martin’s Press. She is currently at work on a second book – an exploration of navigation traditions, neuroscience, and human relationships to space, time and memory.
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
In this book he dedicates two chapters to this subject: “Are memories stored as material traces?” and “Are minds confined to brains?” The prevailing idea is that all our memories are stored in our heads. However, there are a lot of problems with this as it does not match the facts very well. The biggest …
I am fascinated in Animal Migration. I have attended very learned arguments about this: they have found that birds have magnets in their beaks for instance. But as you investigate these arguments they just do not work right. For successful migration you need to know when to go and where to go. Terns for instance…
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…
It is interesting, that the need to know how to get somewhere is often the trigger that enables navigation to begin. I discussed this with a friend of mine, whose wife always says, “Why do you use a SatNav when your own direction finding is better every time?” We discussed how his sense of direction…
This paper is a very good overview of the thinking about avian migratory navigation and acknowledges that birds use all the cues that are available to them to navigate successfully. Magnetic Compass Orientation in a Palaearctic–Indian Night Migrant, the Red-Headed Bunting Summary The earth’s magnetic field, celestial cues, and retention of geographical cues en route…