Shearwaters make efficient navigational decisions, even at very fine scales
Editor’s note You may like this paper Puffins are hero navigators for Animal Nav.
How animals navigate
Do animals have a sense of direction? How do they find their way home? Learn about animal navigation and how different creatures use their senses to get around.
-
-
Quantum effects in evolution: terrestrial fine-tuning of magnetic parameters
Editor’s remark Here is an interesting paper suggesting that animals can detect the magnetic field and use it. I am still very sceptical and think that these ideas are Classic Age of Enlightenment attempts to find quantifiable truth where in fact there may be none. Have a read and let me know your thoughts…
-
Path integration
Adelaide Sibeaux 1 , Cait Newport1, Jonathan P. Green1, Cecilia Karlsson 2, Jacob Engelmann 3 & Theresa Burt de Perera1 have recently published a paper showing that fishes as well as other animals use path integration to find their way home. I believe this is very important and probably the main way we navigate. Path integration maybe the way…
-
Atlantic herring use a time-compensated sun compass for orientation
Lisa Spiecker1,*,‡, Malien Laurien1,*, Wiebke Dammann1, Andrea Franke2,3, Catriona Clemmesen4 and Gabriele Gerlach1,2 ABSTRACT Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), an ecologically and economically important species in the northern hemisphere, shows pronounced seasonal migratory behaviour. To follow distinctive migration patterns over hundreds of kilometers between feeding, overwintering and spawning grounds, they are probably guided by orientation mechanisms. We…
-
Predictive maps in rats and humans for spatial navigation
Highlights We tested humans, rats, and RL agents on a novel modular maze Humans and rats were remarkably similar in their choice of trajectories Both species were most similar to agents utilizing a SR Humans also displayed features of model-based planning in early trials Authors William de Cothi, Nils Nyberg, Eva-Maria Griesbauer, …,E ́ le onore Duvelle, Caswell…
-
Magnetoreception – the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field
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…
-
Eyes are essential for magnetoreception in a mammal
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…