At RIN11 Ingo Schiffner gave his presentation Mathematical Analysis of Pigeon Tracks (the characterisation of the underlying navigational process). He analysed 167 tracks with birds navigating from four different locations and from two different directions. His theory is that pigeons navigate using at least four different components and these components change over the course of…
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…
At present it is very unfashionable to talk of spiritual matters. The overwhelming success of technology has made us decide that the world of science trumps all others. I think that we should look at how, perhaps, this scientific success was achieved. As all of us, who speak several languages know, the structure of language…
A summary: The RIN Conference spends a lot of time on pigeon navigation, with delegates coming from all over the world. The leading players in this world are the Wilschkos from the Johann Wilfgang University Germany, M. Walker from the University of Auckland, and A. Gagliardo of the University of Pisa. Overall, it was decided…
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…
I believe that the ancient peoples “always knew” where they were going and many people today seem to just know where they are going or have a “sense of direction”. Tristan Gooley, has written a fascinating book called, “The Natural Navigator”, he covers many of the clues that help navigate, especially the position of the…
With the emergence of GPS, the need to think has diminished our innate navigational skills. Rosamund F Langston, PhD Lecturer in Behavioural Neuroscience at Ninewells Hospital describes this loss of our innate navigational skills, because like all skills, if you do not use them, you lose them. She includes map reading as one of the…