David Keays is one of the mega stars of animal navigation research and has spent a life time trying to work out how magnetism might work. Here is a summary of his latest work: Magnetoreception is the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field, which is used for orientation and navigation. Behavioural experiments have shown…
Here is another interesting paper: Mole-rat lives underground and basically cannot see and is often studied to understand how they navigate. Caspar, K. R., Moldenhauer, K., Moritz, R. E., Němec, P., Malkemper, E. P. & Begall, S. 2020 Eyes are essential for magnetoreception in a mammal. Journal of The Royal Society Interface17, 20200513. doi: doi:10.1098/rsif.2020.0513. Caspar2 2020 Several…
There has always been huge uncertainty as to how migrating animals learn where to go. 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…
A recent piece of work by a team lead by A. . Kölzsch from Germany tracked a family of Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser albifrons) This goose is a great migrator and winters (December to February) in Western Europe where the researchers were helped by colleagues in the Netherlands for this study. The geese migrate in…
Recently Vera Brust, Bianca Michalik and Ommo Hüppop have produced a paper called “To cross or not to cross – thrushes at the German North Sea coast adapt flight and routing to wind conditions in autumn”. They looked at some of the thrush family (blackbirds, redwings and song thrushes) that migrate across the North sea from the German…
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…
Country Life Magazine (UK) issue July 24th 2019 had an article entitled “Every dog has its day” Those who work closely with animals seem to have a very special relationship with them that may not agree well with established scientific thinking.Editor