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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…
Migration of Banded Stilts from Australia
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…
Ingo Schiffner at RIN11
At RIN11 Ingo Schiffner gave his presentation Mathematical Analysis of Pigeon Tracks (the characterisation of the underlying navigational process). He analysed 167 tracks with birds navigating from four different locations and from two different directions. His theory is that pigeons navigate using at least four different components and these components change over the course of…
Chicken Head Tracking
Our Editor Antonio Nafarrate has sent us this: Hello all and happy 2015. Please check enclosed forwarded video that is definite proof that birds have in their brains a Schuler tuned gyroscopically stabilized inertial platform. Best wishes from Antonio Nafarrate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dPlkFPowCc
The Wayfinders of the South Seas
I was looking through an old copy of Classic Boat magazine (September 2004) when I discovered this article on how traditional Polynesian navigators operated. I have précised this article. For me, the importance of all this is that humans are animals but we can communicate together so that insights on how we navigated before the…
Chris the Cuckoo running later than ever
In previous years, Chris has been one of the first tagged Cuckoos to cross the Sahara desert but this year he seems to be on a much more relaxed schedule. His previous arrival dates south, of the Sahara desert, were mid July but right now he’s not even in Africa – he’s still in Italy!…