Similar Posts
The Compass Within – Sense of direction
Article in Nature volume 18 number 4 April 2015 This is a very important piece of work which begins to bring us to an understanding how a sense of direction works and which is NOT magnetic based. We at animalnav.org know that this “sense of direction” must be crucial for navigation so Simon Raggett’s (one…
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…
Honey bees are not effected by Magnetism
Our associate editor Antonio Nafarrate has brought this paper to my attention. “Does the Earth’s magnetic Field serve as a reference alignment for the Honeybee waggle dance” (Dec 2014) by Professor Gerhard Gries et al. This paper is fascinating as it uses the famous waggle dance performed inside the hive by the foragers to show…
Physical limits to magneto genetics – Markus Meister
AbstractThis is an analysis of how magnetic fields affect biological molecules and cells. It was prompted by a series of prominent reports regarding magnetism in biological systems. The first claims to have identified a protein complex that acts like a compass needle to guide magnetic orientation in animals (Qin et al., 2016). Two other articles report…
Dowsing Dolphins by Jim Lyons
Background From time to time, I scan the literature to find out the latest ideas on animal behaviour but navigation in particular. Despite numerous papers involving the tracking of birds, hamsters, fish etc., I struggle to find the word that readers of this Journal use all the time – Dowsing. Since the first recording of…
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…