This paper is fascinating. This site has always been sceptical about Magnetoreception – the magnetic navigation story for the same reasons that are discussed here. No-one has found the magnetic receptors. the cryptochrome story requires conditions in the eye that are not conducive to quantum effects and knowing where North is does not help without a map showing where you are and where you are going so giving you the required bearing for navigation.
Warrant11 2016 Here is a fascinating paper about The Australian Bogong Moth Agrotis infusa: which is the most amazing Long-Distance Nocturnal Navigator. As they navigate at night their feat is perhaps even more amazing than the migration of the Monarch butterfly in the USA. Richard Nissen editor Warrant E, Frost B, Green K, Mouritsen H, Dreyer D, Adden A, Brauburger K and Heinze S (2016) The Australian…
For those of us following the BTO satellite tagged Cuckoos, we can see Spring is well on its way – three birds have already left their winter locations in the Congo rainforest and are at their stopover sites in West Africa. Later this month, rested and loaded with the fat that will fuel their journeys, they will…
There was a recent article in the media, including the New Scientist and the Times about the migration of the Banded Stilt, which seems to migrate very fast at short notice. The recent interest has been triggered by work done at Deakin University in Victoria Australia by Reece Pedler. Banded Stilts normally live on the…
British Trust for Ornithology: www.bto.org/ Bird research charity in the United Kingdom. Research investigating the populations, movements and ecology of wild birds. You will see that we have links to this site in several places but under especially under “cuckoo tracking” in recent post and interesting sites. Phil Atkinson (Head of International Research) spoke to me…
On 30th March 2015, Richard Silberstein gave a presentation to the Science Medical Network on “Universal Consciousness”: Mystics of various religious and spiritual traditions have, on occasion, described a mystical realisation as that of the entire universe’s conscious. In this talk, he described some novel parapsychological studies that may shed light on the question of whether consciousness constitutes an…
http://vimeo.com/31158841 This video shows the amazing whorls and patterns made by a flock of starlings. You might see these over cities. These displays used to be common over London, and I think still are over Rome. Whilst there has been much scientific research and theories on why starlings do this, the contention is that the…