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.
Sense of Direction
The sense of direction is a fascinating and essential aspect of human and animal behaviour that involves the ability to orient oneself in space and navigate through the environment. Discover the science behind how different species, from insects to humans, find their way and establish spatial relationships, including the role of sensory inputs, memory, learning, and cognitive processes. Learn about the factors that affect the sense of direction, from genetics and age to culture and experience, and the impact of technology and environment on wayfinding. Explore the practical applications of the sense of direction research, from urban planning to medicine, and this knowledge’s ethical and social implications. Discover our resources and expert insights on the sense of direction and expand your understanding of this fascinating and complex topic.
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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…
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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…
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A conceptual framework on the role of magnetic cues in songbird migration ecology
This paper is difficult to understand but it summarises the work on animal navigation to date. The key is that all the research which is confident that animals navigate using magnetic cues are not necessarily the whole story and that all navigators use all the clues they can get to help them. Recently there was…
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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…
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The efficiency of varying methods and degrees of time compensation for the solar azimuth
This paper on navigation using the sun is an interesting one by Richard Massy and Karl R. Wotton. Already Tristan Gooley the natural navigator and one of our heroes walked across Crete to prove that the brain can in fact compensate for the movement of the sun during the day and keep a course by…
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In Praise Of Walking by Shane O’Mara
The new science of how we walk and why it’s good for us This is a snippet from the book, In Praise of Walking by Shane O’Mara, which examines the science behind one of the basic skills that defines us as human beings. Scientists are slowly working out how our sense of direction works. It’s…