Back in 1975, I watched on television a man seated in the stern of a rowing dinghy, keeping his head down over a pair of angle-rods, and directing a boy to row him across a wide, tidal creek to a distant, red plastic mooring buoy. The lad at the oars naturally had his back to…
Whilst the outbound track for these seals is random in search of food. When the seals feel it is time to return home they choose a perfect straight great circle route home. (A great circle route is the one that modern airliners use as this is the shortest distance between two points on the globe). This…
Elephant seals (sea elephants) are large, oceangoing seals in the genus Mirounga. There are two species: the northern elephant seal (M. angustirostris) and the southern elephant seal (M. leonina). Both were hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century, but numbers have since recovered. The northern elephant seal, somewhat smaller than its southern relative, ranges over the Pacific coast of the U.S., Canada and Mexico….
Evidence for a critical role of olfactory cues for homing after displacement in open ocean. Procellariiformes are pelagic birds which wander in the open sea most of the year and often nest in remote oceanic islands. These birds are able to pinpoint their breeding sites following straight routes even if their nesting island is located…
Analysis of GPS recorded tracks of intact trigeminal sectioned pigeons. Conditioning studies have shown that the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve is functionally involved in the perception of the geomagnetic field intensity. However, homing experiments conducted in the field with homing pigeons demonstrated that trigeminal mediation of magnetoreception is neither necessary nor sufficient for…
There is a lot of work showing that animals can detect magnetic fields but it is important to remember – no moving electric charge, no magnetism. We have spoken of the pineal gland which detects ALL frequencies because of its shape. It is the fundamental shape emerging from two intersecting vortices – in other words…
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…