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 adjusting to it.
One way to look at navigation is to think of a rope. A rope is made up of many strands each are often tiny weak and short. The Incas made bridges over great canyons using straw wound together to make great strong ropes that last for ages. Each fibre of a rope must be wound…
The bar tailed Godwit is about 37/39cms (15ins) long which summers in the arctic yet migrates to warmer locations during the winter. These include astonishing non-stop flights over the Pacific to New Zealand every Northern winter. As you can see from the tracks, you will see it flies in a perfect straight flight from the Arctic…
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://jeb.biologists.org/content/212/22/3597.full This link is a very complete overview of the animal navigation at present in 2015. It covers all the important work that has been done and discusses what has been found along with all the problems associated with different approaches. As you will see it ends up by saying that we still do not…
Susanne Åkesson is one of the foremost academics working in the field of animal navigation. Her recent paper: “Timing avian long-distance migration: from internal clock mechanisms to global flights” is impressive and important. Please see attached the whole paper: Timing avian long-distance migration: from internal clock mechanisms to global flights. One of the critical questions is…
A summary 2011 The two prevailing ideas on long distance navigation are based around two ideas: Magnetic cues Olfactory cues (smell) It is clear that near home animals, birds and humans build up a map of their neighbourhood with remembered sights smells and landmarks. This is all mediated by the hippocampus. There is some evidence…