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 soon to be forgotten skills, but also a sense of direction too.
Every three years the Royal Institute of Navigation hosts a conference in the UK for everyone interested in Animal navigation. The next one is in 2016: RIN16 (Animal Navigation) 13/04/2016 12:00:00 to 15/04/2016 12:00:00 Royal Holloway College, London RIN16 Orientation & Navigation Birds, Humans & Other Animals will be the ninth International Conference on Animal…
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…
Here is a link to Monarch Butterflies http://phys.org/tags/monarch+butterflies/ Editor’s remark I have difficulty understanding these results which suggest that Cryptrochromes are involved which I am fairly clear is impossible as there is not enough time for the quantum coherence to take place. Inclination compasses are very inaccurate as there can be huge changes locally due to…
The avian navigation system is rather complex, based on many factors, and it even used two aspects of the magnetic field. If, in a given situation, one can show that the receptors in the beak have no effect, that does not mean that they do not have one in another situation! Anaesthesia of the upper…
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…
You may be interested in how the data is collected for tracking animals. Biotrack is a British company that helps and advises on the best systems to use. The geolocator is fascinating, it uses The longitudinal estimate of the location of the tag at any point in time is determined with reference to the time of…