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The long Way (excerpt) by Bernard Moitessier
Bernard Moitessier sailed single handed around the world in 1969 and published his accounts of this trip in 1971 in the book “The long Way”. This description comes from this book. Moitessier was a very seasoned sailor when he undertook the single handed round the world challenge in 1969. He opted out of the race…
Interaction between man and dolphins, written by Dante
Intro >> Here is a lovely quote about the interaction between man and dolphins written by Dante in his Divine Comedy written in Italy in the early part of the 14th Century. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy for more. In Canto 22 (in translation from the original) “Just as dolphins do, when with the arched back, they signal to the seamen to prepare for…
The prevailing ideas on Navigation
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…
Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis
There has always been huge uncertainty as to how migrating animals learn where to go. The cuckoo is a perfect example, as the newly hatched birds must travel from Europe to The Congo Basin for the winter, but how do they know the way (as their parents departed sometime before and they travel on their…
Hippocampus by Simon Raggett
I was at a lecture on animal navigation at the Royal Society this week. Nothing world changing, but possibly some useful bits of background regarding navigation. This deals with the mammal brain, but given the similarities in behaviour between mammals and birds one can assume the birds might achieve some similar process. The important brain…
Intro This site takes you into the world where technology is trying to understand animal migration by using tags and a sophisticated satellite system to follow routes taken by animals. Up until now tags have often been very heavy, or at least too heavy for a lot of tiny birds that make huge migrations such…