www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17855194
Please look at this link as it covers important ground on Avian Navigation. You will see that one of our heroes David Keays has established that the magnetite structure in the beaks of pigeons does not exist. The magnetic theory still has problems because you cannot navigate using a compass without knowing where you are, where you are heading and a map.
Richard Nissen
Editor
A summary 2011 The two prevailing ideas on long distance navigation are based around two ideas: Magnetic cues Olfactory cues (smell) It is clear that near home animals, birds and humans build up a map of their neighbourhood with remembered sights smells and landmarks. This is all mediated by the hippocampus. There is some evidence…
http://www.2physics.com/2012/10/avian-compass-reloaded.html Please find this interesting piece entitled The Avian Compass Reloaded by Dagomir Kaszlikowski at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, Department of Physics, National University of Singapore. Kaszlikowski talks about the the quantum effect that is required to enable the Cryptochromes in the eye of the European Robin to be sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field….
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:…
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…
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…
Please find this PDF which follows a lot of research on Albatrosses. This presentation throws up some really interesting issues. I feel comfortable that albatrosses when they decide to go home follow their sense of direction to their home islands in the South Atlantic: the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen as they fly straight there. However, please…