There was yet another case recently of a dog running away from its new home and returning many miles to its original home. My uncle, totally blind from birth, used to navigate around the streets of his home town, giving directions to his wife who was driving. Elvin Thurston (New Scientist April 30th 2016 p 53) says that when young he could navigate a car without a map, and suspects he was sensitive to magnetic fields. It is difficult to see what other explanation there is for these navigational feats and extraordinary sense of direction.
Dogs and cats seem to have this internal map and compass. Could it be related to their sharp sense of smell, sight?
"Could it be related to their sharp sense of smell, sight?"
When I was out hunting with my dog, it was very hard to direct his attention by pointing at something. He would go off with his nose on the ground even when a rabbit for example was quite visible. I don't think smell or sight would be any use at all to dogs that traveled very long distances, including at night, to previous homes.
I witnessed a case of a neoighbour's dog who was sent tens of miles amaw friom home to get rid of it. After few days, the dog came back home witout using a map that we, as humans, could hardly understand. Animals are not so intelligent as humansbut, God gave them certain developped senses.
Animals have not map and compass in common sense. Think about signal/noise ratio. Extraordinary ability to orient in the space has another nature.
"The wild rock pigeon has an innate homing ability, meaning that it will generally return to its nest, using magnetoreception. This made it relatively easy to breed from the birds that repeatedly found their way home over long distances"
Are we agreed that domestic pigeons have been bred mainly for their homing ability? So anatomists need to compare the brains and sense organs of wild and domestic pigeons to see how they differ. Surely magnetic molecules are more likely to be found in the ear than the brain?
"As Anatomist I think research in mid brain and cerebellum may reveal internal magnetic molecules"
An awesome question from Anthony Gordon, and equally interesting answers so far contributed, I think. I share some of Mostafa Kandil Soliman's view about the cerebellum holding some promise. James Kalat of North Carolina State University offered that "the most obvious effect of cerebellar damage is trouble with rapid movements that require accurate aim and timing" (Kalat, 2007. Biological Psychology, 9th edition, pg. 247, Cengage Learning Inc., Wadsworth, Belmont, USA, ISBN 13: 978-0-495-09360-2, 10: 0-495-09360-2). But this homing behaviour of dogs and other animals is obviously a complex behaviour that may depend on contributions from many other nervous system structures. Proprioception or the ability to sense the position of the body in space is no doubt indicated here.
"...suspects he was sensitive to magnetic fields. It is difficult to see what other explanation there is for these navigational feats and extraordinary sense of direction."
Think about ocean fishes. There are no magnetic fields in the conductor (sea water is good electric conductor), but fishes demonstrate same intriguing ability to navigate. So magnetic field is not a key for understanding navigational abilities of animals, I deem.
Hi Eugene, I understand there are packs of wild dogs roaming the streets of Moscow. Why not round some up, fit them with cameras and tracking devices, release them in Siberia and see what happens?
"But this homing behaviour of dogs and other animals is obviously a complex behaviour that may depend on contributions from many other nervous system structures."
Focusing on the brain and CNS has not cracked this problem, nor do I think it will. The question is, What sensory information is the brain using? The brain secondarily adapts to using all sorts of sensory information, eg cochlear implants.
"There are no magnetic fields in the conductor (sea water is good electric conductor), but fishes demonstrate same intriguing ability to navigate. So magnetic field is not a key for understanding navigational abilities of animals"
But see below. Animals need to use all available sensory information in navigation, so even if fish did not use magnetism, dogs might differ. Because my blind uncle could navigate does not mean that humans do not make use of vision to map their environment.
*********************************************************************
"Sockeye salmon 'sense magnetic field of home'
By Helen Briggs BBC News
7 February 2013...
Salmon use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate across the ocean as they return to their home rivers to breed, research suggests.
Each year millions of fish make the journey home in one of the toughest migrations of the animal kingdom.
The memory of the magnetic field where they first entered the sea helps them find their way back, say US scientists.
The data, in Current Biology, provide the first direct evidence that salmon use geomagnetic cues in migration."
"Salmon use the Earth's magnetic field..."
I am sceptic about magnetic field as source of salmon's navigation, because of very poor signal/noise ratio.
"...so even if fish did not use magnetism, dogs might differ..."
Sure, it possible. But there is Occam's razor - it is reasonable to think that nature of navigation of all live creatures is just the same for all species.
Another intriguing fact: blind archer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_Dong-hyun
The accuracy of targeting for archer is better than arcminute! But it is difficult to explaine it by magnetic field, because archer do not moving during the targeting.
"it is reasonable to think that nature of navigation of all live creatures is just the same for all species"
I have just been watching David Attenborough's latest programme on Bio-luminescence on BBC 2 last night. If I recall he said it had evolved independently in over 30 species, based on different chemical reactions.
Talking about sensation, and methods. For starters, let's track the activity in a dog's primary brain areas for vision, hearing, or smell during two periods: when being taken through the neighbourhood, and during homing. The reason I say so is that it just might be that the animal could encode memory of basal sound, colour, or or smell stimuli of the neighbourhood during the first lap, which may be accessed upon the second. Sounds far-fetched or too simplistic?
"the animal could encode memory of basal sound, colour, or or smell stimuli of the neighbourhood during the first lap, which may be accessed upon the second."
I don't think there is any big problem understanding how animals map and navigate throughout their home territory. Presumably they do this by registering and integrating information from all their senses.
The puzzle arises when they are relocated to unfamiliar territory outside their home range. They have to
"...... how animals map and navigate throughout their home territory. Presumably they do this by registering and integrating information from all their senses. The puzzle arises when they are relocated to unfamiliar territory outside their home range."
Exactly the point. What if they do this between old and new environments, even if they happen to be asleep intermittently during the first journey? I suppose that the same process is instant.
Thomas Goodey
Here in Romania, we gave a young male black cat to a neighbor 9 km away, and we carried him there in a closed box. Two days later he was gone from the neighbor’s house, and a week later he turned up back at our house (considerably annoyed). He came back 9 km across the fields… somehow. How did he find his way? Don’t ask me! (The Conversation July 21 2016).
Yes, animals definitely can find their way back home across fairly large distances, even in the absence of overt visual, olfactory, and/or auditory cues. Some notable/famous animals are rats, gerbils, hamsters, cats (as aforementioned), dogs, bats, honey bees, wasps, desert ants Cataglyphus fortis, jumping spiders, etc.; the list goes on. [see link pertaining to this homing behavior of animals, which is called "path integration".] What is documented in research are behavioral evidences of their homing behavior, which implicate that non-human animals can perform cognitive-mapping like the way we humans can. However, there are alternative arguments that lower animals like insects are processing and integrating motion-based/somatosensory cues at the perceptual level, not necessarily at the deeper cognitive level, so the question is still out about whether all non-human animals are capable of construing a cognitive map. Given that animals don't speak the human tongue, the quest still remains for further investigations of non-human animals' mental construction of large-scale environments through better techniques.
"Yes, animals definitely can find their way back home across fairly large distances, even in the absence of overt visual, olfactory, and/or auditory cues."
What about vestibular or magnetic cues? I wasn't disputing that animals can perform prodigious feats of navigation, I would just like to know how they do it! It does not have to involve a cognitive map. London taxi drivers used to have to internalize such a map, now navigation can be done by simply following instructions on your phone.
"Navigation system in rodents akin to ancient, open ocean direction-finding
Date:December 4, 2018 Source:New York University
Summary:The navigation system used by rodents is similar to that used by Pacific Islanders in finding their way through the open ocean without a compass, a team of neuroscientists has found...
Its findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, correct a common misconception: mammals' navigation systems operate like a global positioning system (GPS), which relies on a compass-like direction sense."
"Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet
16 downloads 94 views
Sabine Martini, Sabine Begall, Tanja Findeklee, Marcus Schmitt, E. Pascal Malkemper, Hynek Burda
Magnetoreception, the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field (MF), is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In 1966, the first report on a magnetosensitive vertebrate, the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), was published. After that, numerous further...
Animal Behavior, Ecology, Zoology
E Lesley Rogers doi:10.7717/peerj.6117"
"Evidence for ancient magnetic sense in humans
Human brain responds to changes in earth's magnetic fields
Date: March 18, 2019 Source: Society for Neuroscience...
The human brain can unconsciously respond to changes in Earth's magnetic fields, according to a team of geoscientists and neurobiologists. Reported in eNeuro, this interdisciplinary study revives a research area in neuroscience that has remained dormant for decades.
Many animals, such as migratory birds and sea turtles, have a geomagnetic sense that supports their biological navigation system. Although magnetoreception has been well-studied in these animals, scientists have not yet been able to determine whether humans share this ability."
By Jason Daley SMITHSONIAN.COM MARCH 20, 2019 4:19 PM 8300071
There's a pretty long catalogue of animals that appear to possess magnetoreception, or the ability to detect Earth's magnetic fields, including pigeons, dogs, trout, bees, turtles and salamanders. But researchers have never been able to determine if humans have this hidden superpower as well, despite decades of attempts. A provocative new study, published in the journal eNeuro suggests our brains may indeed detect magnetic fields—at least in some people, though it’s not possible to say if it affects human behavior in any way...
Currently, scientists are still trying to figure out just how magnetoreception works in animals. Eric Hand at Science reports that most of what we know about magnetic sense comes from behavioral studies of animals, which change the way they orient themselves or navigate if the magnetic field is manipulated. (Dogs will orient themselves along the north-south axis of Earth's magnetic field when they poop.) Finding out just how that magnetic field sense works on a biological level has been more of a challenge.
There are currently two major hypotheses. One involves cryptochromes, specialized proteins in the retina, that somehow communicate magnetic information to the brain. The other hypothesis is that microscopic particles of the mineral magnetite sit in certain receptor cells in the ear or behind the nose and work as biological compasses.
George Dvorsky at Gizmodo reports that lead researcher of the new study Joseph Kirschvink, a geophysicist from CalTech who has been investigating magnetic fields and magnetoreception for decades, decided to bypass questions about how the sense might work and focus on whether there were signs of magnetoreception in the brain at all.
“Our approach was to focus on brainwave activity alone,” Kirschvink tells Dvorsky. “If the brain is not responding to the magnetic field, then there is no way that the magnetic field can influence someone’s behavior. The brain must first perceive something in order to act on it—there is no such thing as ‘extra-sensory perception.’"
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/can-humans-detect-magnetic-fields-180971760/#Yx5X3zD2dx4OeBJe.99"
long time ago we had a cat and wanted to get rid of it because it killed our hens and pigeon. we took it miles and miles away from our hoouse, but it made its way back home. How? No convinc answer!
The thing is is different for each species. Navigation systems are connected with cognitive devices available in each kind of living being. Ants navigate using sun position, bees build maps through smell landmarks. We build maps using what our cognitive system allows to use. So do them. Some basics in:
Hauser, Marc (2001) Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think. Henry Holt and Company.
"Scientific misconduct
In 2007, Harvard University announced an internal investigation of alleged scientific misconduct by Hauser. In August 2010, the investigators found him solely responsible for eight counts of misconduct, and he took a year's leave of absence.[2] In July 2011, Hauser resigned his faculty position at Harvard, effective August 1, 2011...
In September 2012, after conducting a separate investigation, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) found Hauser guilty of scientific misconduct.[4] They concluded that Hauser had fabricated data in one study, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and incorrectly described how studies were conducted. The ORI barred Hauser from certain types of research and required that other research be conducted under supervision."
Wikipedia
"How Dogs Find Their Way Home
Lost dogs rely on a fine sense of smell to map their location.
By C. Claiborne Ray
- April 15, 2019 [NY Times]
Q. Our dog escaped from the car. How did he find his way home the next day from nearly three miles away?
A. What took so long? Dogs are well known for their ability to backtrack to a beloved home — or person. Most animal behavior experts attribute their navigating ability largely to a hypersensitive sense of smell.
Three miles is not a great distance, compared with some of the epic homeward journeys that dogs have occasionally made, and a three-mile radius would be rich in odor guideposts.
The theory is that a dog creates a map of scents from odiferous sites like a food store or fertilized garden — or even just a hint of an owner’s scent in the ground or air.
Dogs are especially sensitive to the odor of the humans in their lives. One study used MRI imaging to study activity in the caudate nucleus, a brain area associated with the expectation of a reward.
Dogs of varying breeds were exposed to their own scent or that of a familiar dog, a strange dog, a strange human or a familiar human. By far the strongest activation followed exposure to the scent of a familiar person.
Another navigational clue may come from dogs’ suspected sensitivity to differences in magnetic orientation. A study of dozens of dogs found that they usually preferred to defecate with their bodies aligned in a north-south orientation, a preference that disappeared when the magnetic field was disturbed...
A version of this article appears in print on April 16, 2019, on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Something Smells Familiar."
I recently attended a lecture by a world expert on ant navigation. He gave a convincing story that they had a visual map of the environment, at least close to their nest. However I was far from convinced that vision was the main source of their direction finding. I therefore asked if blind cave ants existed, but he did not know of any. Google then turned up examples of subterranean and cave ants where any visual cues could surely be discounted. Presumably they nest and forage like other ants, but I did not find any information on this. Does anyone know how they find things?
He accepted the stories of dogs finding their way home over hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory, but did not know this literature. When asked for any explanation, he suggested olfaction. This explanation is surely even less likely than my proposal of an internal GPS system.
Cave animals must presumably have a well developed vestibular system which provides them with a map of their environment.
"Dogs may use Earth’s magnetic field to take shortcuts
By Erik Stokstad Jul. 17, 2020 , 8:00 AM [Science]
Dogs are renowned for their world-class noses, but a new study suggests they may have an additional—albeit hidden—sensory talent: a magnetic compass. The sense appears to allow them to use Earth’s magnetic field to calculate shortcuts in unfamiliar terrain.
The finding is a first in dogs, says Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies “magnetoreception” and navigation in turtles. She notes that dogs’ navigational abilities have been studied much less compared with migratory animals such as birds. “It’s an insight into how [dogs] build up their picture of space,” adds Richard Holland, a biologist at Bangor University who studies bird navigation.
There were already hints that dogs—like many animals, and maybe even humans—can perceive Earth’s magnetic field. In 2013, Hynek Burda, a sensory ecologist at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague who has worked on magnetic reception for 3 decades, and colleagues showed dogs tend to orient themselves north-south while urinating or defecating. Because this behavior is involved in marking and recognizing territory, Burda reasoned the alignment helps dogs figure out the location relative to other spots. But stationary alignment isn’t the same thing as navigation.
In the new study, Burda’s graduate student, Kateřina Benediktová, initially put video cameras and GPS trackers on four dogs and took them on trips into the forest. The dogs would scamper off to chase the scent of an animal for 400 meters on average. The GPS tracks showed two types of behavior during their return trips to their owner..."
Interesting topic.
Really amazing how they can remember! Certainly they should have some sensors to recognize.
The Weirdest Senses Animals Have That You Don’t
(https://www.wired.com/2016/06/weirdest-senses-animals-humans-dont/)
Sensory Biology Around the Animal Kingdom
(https://www.the-scientist.com/features/sensory-biology-around-the-animal-kingdom-32941)
Animal Sensory Systems
(http://bio1520.biology.gatech.edu/chemical-and-electrical-signals/sensory-systems-i/)
Here is a useful case as it shows travel back to a place and not to her owners. Surely someone on RG can solve this mystery.
Actually, there are two mysteries, how she did it, and why no one saw her doing it. Perhaps she travelled by night, navigating by the stars.
"Missing labrador makes 57-mile journey back to her old home where she waited on porch
A four-year-old labrador named Cleo made a 57-mile journey to the home she lived in two years ago - and neither her owners nor the people who live there now have any idea how the dog did it
A couple were left baffled when they returned to their house to find a strange dog making itself right at home on their front porch.
The adorable labrador seemed so familiar with the home because she did in fact live there - two years ago.
Britney and Colton Michael got out of their car to find the four-year-old dog waiting patiently on their front steps, but the confused dog wouldn't let them come close to her.
The pair eventually managed to get her microchip checked to discover her name was Cleo, and Britney immediately recognised her owner's details as the people who had sold them their home back in November 2018.
Her owners had posted an appeal on Facebook a week earlier for help to find their missing dog, and couldn't believe it when Michael called to say Cleo had walked 'home', as reported by KMBC.
The door-to-door journey is just under 60 miles and no one knows exactly how Cleo completed the trip where she would have had to have crossed a river at some point along the way.
Her owner, Drew, said: "It's the most bizarre story. Really, she's everything to us and to my mother.
"It just feels really good to be reunited with her."
Michael said they were not surprised Cleo was scared when they found her waiting on the porch, saying: "She finds her way home, and there's some strangers living in it. That would be scary for anybody.
"Now that we know who she belongs to, if she pops up again, we know who to call.
"That's a hike for anybody. It's a mystery, something we will probably never know."
DailyMirror"
The following was research conducted in shrimp (lower animal. an Arthropod)
Path integration error and adaptable search behaviors in a mantis shrimp
(https://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/223/14/jeb224618.full.pdf)
Concerning cases proposed by Jetty Ramadevi and Anthony G Gordon - it is not a question of navigation, it is question of knowledge. They know precisely they target in the context of space - that's a mystery.
Definitely, Eugene that is related to brain and memory. Like how we have knowledge so and so is particular place or location or something, all organisms must have some knowledge to their level. May be we need not even surprised.
For e.g. birds also by evening all reach their nests at particular place/tree let them go how far for searching food.
"...that is related to brain and memory." Jetty Ramadevi, I am not so sure about brain itself - but of course it is related to memory. I guess navigation idea is not very fruitful, because its address the issue to physical factors - like magnetic field, sun position, etc.
To travel over long distances, animals need an accurate map of their home area, and knowledge of where they are and where their home is. This is all based on low level sense information and does not depend on sophisticated brain activity, since maps are present in ants for example. The question is, which senses?
Anthony G Gordon, here is a trick. Map is a twin of reality made from signs (according to definition). No signs that ants use signs (sorry for the play of words)
Is it!!! For e.g. let us take birds, by morning sun raises and by evening sun sets, right. This is a factor should be considered. Otherwise how birds know the difference between day and night Eugene!! What do say, is it not navigation!!
Jetty Ramadevi, I illustrated my thought before. Day/night separation is about temporal, not spatial awareness. And I am not sure that birds and especially insects operate with so abstract ideas as opposite terms "Day" and "Night". I am skeptic about they ability to use even much simpler tool like signs. Dog that made 57-miles journey obviously has no compass or map. But this dog obviously has will and awareness. Awareness could be achieved with the map, or without it. Second one is most interesting.
Because human is intelligent can speak, walk. All these characters acquired as per evolution slowly during course of time. Day and night these are sensory items, in case of animals they should have some sensors to feel like how we identify. Bright light they can view, and can do anything. Darkness nothing is visible, they take rest. Either dog or birds certainly do not have maps but should have some sense or sensory receptors to identify/recognise what is what.
"...but should have some sense or sensory receptors..." Yes, they must have. Moreover, they must have very rich knowledge about geospatial context for great extents with unbelievable accuracy - for discussed case, for example. But they don't have sensors. Sea fishes, insects, etc. could not have geospatial sensors with required accuracy. It is conundrum.
Your Dog Knows Exactly What You’re Saying
(https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/08/dogs-know-saying-people-speech/)
Here is an excellent article on bird brains.
It is baffling how birds manage find hidden caches. However, I think it is a big mistake to grasp onto a superficially but surly implausible mechanism in the absence of any offered alternative explanation. THERE IS NO WAY VISUAL CLUES CAN BE THE MAIN AGENCY IN VIEW OF THE DRAMATIC SEASONAL CHANGES IN THE VISUAL ENVIRONMENT.
So we must take seriously an inbuilt GPS system.
"How a 5-Ounce Bird Stores 10,000 Maps in Its Head
4 MINUTE READ BY ROBERT KRULWICH
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 3, 2015
IT WEIGHS ONLY four or five ounces, its brain practically nothing, and yet, oh my God, what this little bird can do. It’s astonishing.
Around now, as we begin December, the Clark’s nutcracker has, conservatively, 5,000 (and up to 20,000) treasure maps in its head. They’re accurate, detailed, and instantly retrievable.
It’s been burying seeds since August. It’s hidden so many (one study says almost 100,000 seeds) in the forest, meadows, and tree nooks that it can now fly up, look down, and see little x’s marking those spots..
It starts in high summer, when whitebark pine trees produce seeds in their cones—ripe for plucking. Nutcrackers dash from tree to tree, inspect, and, with their sharp beaks, tear into the cones, pulling seeds out one by one. They work fast...
Next, they land. Sometimes they peck little holes in the topsoil or under the leaf litter. Sometimes they leave seeds in nooks high up on trees. Most deposits have two or three seeds, so that by the time November comes around, a single bird has created 5,000 to 20,000 hiding places. They don’t stop until it gets too cold. “They are cache-aholics,” says Tomback.
When December comes—like right around now—the trees go bare and it’s time to switch from hide to seek mode. Nobody knows exactly how the birds manage this, but the best guess is that when a nutcracker digs its hole, it will notice two or three permanent objects at the site: an irregular rock, a bush, a tree stump. The objects, or markers, will be at different angles from the hiding place.
Next, they measure. This seed cache, they note, “is a certain distance from object one, a certain distance from object two, a certain distance from object three,” says Tomback. “What they’re doing is triangulating...
it’s time to eat, they’ll land at a site. “They will perch on a tree,” says Tomback, “on a low branch, [then light onto the ground, where] they pause, look around a bit, and they start digging, and in a few cases I’ll see them move slightly to the right or to the left and then come up again.”
She’s convinced that they’re remembering markers from summer or fall and using them to point to the X spot—and, “Lo and behold, these birds come up with their cracked seeds,” she says. “And it’s really pretty astounding.”..
When the spring comes and the birds have their babies, they continue to visit old sites to gather seeds until their chicks fledge...
Robert Krulwich is a journalist and author of the National Geographic blog Curiously Krulwich."
"Birds Use an Invisible 'Map' to Find Their Way in Faraway Places They've Never Seen
RICHARD HOLLAND & DMITRY KISHKINEV, THE CONVERSATION 15 FEBRUARY 2021
Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa ...
Now, our new study of Eurasian reed warblers has found that this remarkable ability involves a "magnetic map" that works like our human system of coordinates. Surprisingly, our study found that these birds understand the magnetic field of places thousands of miles into territory they've never before visited – suggesting some birds could possess a "global GPS system" that can tell them how to get home from anywhere on Earth.
Mind maps
It's long been known that adult birds develop some sort of navigational map to help them migrate. How they do this has remained controversial. Several cues have been proposed as guides for migratory birds – including odours, infra-sound, and even variations in gravity.
However, a gathering body of evidence has indicated that the Earth's magnetic field is one of the likeliest solutions to this mystery. It has been suggested that different parameters of the Earth's magnetic field could form a grid, which birds follow, of north-south and east-west lines...
Richard Holland, Professor in Animal Behaviour, School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University and Dmitry Kishkinev, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and Behavioural Neuroscience, Keele University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Excellent long definitve review article:
"March 29, 2021 Dept. of Science April 5, 2021 Issue
Why Animals Don’t Get Lost Birds do it. Bees do it. Learning about the astounding navigational feats of wild creatures can teach us a lot about where we’re going. By Kathryn Schulz
One of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed involved an otherwise unprepossessing house cat named Billy. This was some years ago, shortly after I had moved into a little rental house in the Hudson Valley. Billy, a big, bad-tempered old tomcat, belonged to the previous tenant, a guy by the name of Phil. Phil adored that cat, and the cat—improbably, given his otherwise unenthusiastic feelings about humanity—returned the favor .On the day Phil vacated the house, he wrestled an irate Billy into a cat carrier, loaded him into a moving van, and headed toward his new apartment, in Brooklyn. Thirty minutes down I-84, in the middle of a drenching rainstorm, the cat somehow clawed his way out of the carrier. Phil pulled over to the shoulder but found that, from the driver’s seat, he could neither coax nor drag the cat back into captivity. Moving carefully, he got out of the van, walked around to the other side, and opened the door a gingerly two inches—whereupon Billy shot out, streaked unscathed across two lanes of seventy-mile-per-hour traffic, and disappeared into the wide, overgrown median. After nearly an hour in the pouring rain trying to make his own way to the other side, Phil gave up and, heartbroken, continued onward to his newly diminished home. Some weeks later, at a little before seven in the morning, I woke up to a banging at my door. Braced for an emergency, I rushed downstairs. The house had double-glass doors flanked by picture windows, which together gave out onto almost the entire yard, but I could see no one. I was standing there, sleep-addled and confused, when up onto his hind legs and into my line of vision popped an extremely scrawny and filthy gray cat. I gaped. Then I opened the door and asked the cat, idiotically, “Are you Billy?” He paced, distraught, and meowed at the door. I retreated inside and returned with a bowl each of food and water, but he ignored them and banged again at the door. Flummoxed, I took a picture and texted it to my landlord with much the same question I had asked the cat: “Is this Billy?”Ninety minutes later, Phil showed up at my door. The cat, who had been pacing continuously, took one look and leaped into Phil’s arms—literally hurled himself the several feet necessary to be bundled into his erstwhile owner’s chest. Phil, a six-foot-tall bartender of the badass variety, promptly started to cry. After a few minutes of mutual adoration, the cat hopped down, purring, devoured the food I had put out two hours earlier, lay down in a sunny patch of grass by the door, and embarked on an elaborate bath. How Billy accomplished his remarkable feat remains a mystery, not only to me but to everyone. In 2013, after an indoor cat named Holly went missing during a road trip with her owners to Daytona Beach and turned up back home two months later, in West Palm Beach, two hundred miles away, the collective ethological response to the question of how she did it was “Beats me.” And that bafflement is generalizable. Cats, bats, elephant seals, red-tailed hawks, wildebeests, gypsy moths, cuttlefish, slime mold, emperor penguins: to one degree or another, every animal on earth knows how to navigate—and, to one degree or another, scientists remain perplexed by how they do so. What makes this striking is that we are living in a golden age of information about animal travels.
Many other exceptional navigators, however, are humble and unsung, and learning about them is one of the pleasures of “Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way,” by David Barrie, and “Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation,” by the science writer Carol Grant Gould and her husband, the evolutionary biologist James L. Gould. Each winter, a member of the crow family, the Clark’s nutcracker, recovers the food it has previously cached over a hundred square miles in up to six thousand separate locations. When spiders of the Salticidae family are confined to a maze and shown a prey animal, they will reach it even when doing so initially requires moving in the opposite direction. Rock lobsters migrate en masse from colder waters to warmer ones, travelling, as the Goulds write, “in tandem conga lines, antennae to tail” and maintaining a perfectly straight course, despite powerful currents and the uneven ocean floor... The stories of these avian travellers are told in abundance in Scott Weidensaul’s “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds.”...
The astonishment isn’t just that a bird that size can complete such a voyage, trade winds and thunderstorms be damned; it’s that so minuscule a physiology can contain a sufficiently powerful G.P.S. to keep it on course...
In “From Here to There: The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way,” the British journalist Michael Bond rightly marvels at the navigational brilliance of the early Polynesians, who, about five thousand years ago, began paddling their canoes around a vast area of the Pacific Ocean now known as the Polynesian Triangle...
Other findings might simply satisfy some long-standing curiosity, like that piqued by Billy’s adventure; even today, Barrie writes, “the navigational skills of dogs and cats have received surprisingly little serious scientific attention.” But the chief insight to be gleaned from how other animals make their way around the world is not about their behavior but about our own: the way-finding we must learn to do now is not geographic but moral. ♦
Published in the print edition of the April 5, 2021, issue, with the headline “Where the Wild Things Go.”
Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
Animal navigation is the ability of many animals to find their way accurately without maps or instruments. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds, and many other species navigate effectively over shorter distances.
S J Malik
You have copied/pasted your answer from the source below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_navigation
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Different species obey different internal and external signals that cue their migration. Animals find their way by using an internal compass and mental maps, as well as other cues, to help them navigate.
Several species of animal can integrate cues of different types to orient themselves and navigate effectively. Insects and birds are able to combine learned landmarks with sensed direction (from the earth's magnetic field or from the sky) to identify where they are and so to navigate.
Dogs seem to have an internal compass that helps them find their way back to a given location despite great distance, through unfamiliar territory, and without any landmarks, according to the study. Other animals, most notably birds, have demonstrated this ability.
Birds generally have access to a wide variety of visual cues. But what happens in cases where these cues are weak or absent?
Bats: Fly at night
Parrots: Confusing visual landmarks in Amazon jungle canopy
Whales: In featureless sea
Blind humans: My blind uncle navigated for his driver wife
One would suspect overdevelopment of ears. Hence the excellent acoustic skills and communication abilities of the above. The inner ear contains the vestibular sense organs, the foundation of spatial and orientation ability, and the most likely agent of a magnetic sense..
I am sure Einstein would have Recommended this RG question. But are we any nearer working out how dogs navigate?
"NATURE
Long-Lost Letter Reveals Einstein Predicted The Discovery of Animal Super Senses
CARLY CASSELLA
13 MAY 2021
Decades before we knew birds could 'see' Earth's magnetic field, Albert Einstein was discussing the possibility of undiscovered super senses in his fan mail.
A long-lost letter from the famous scientist to an inquiring engineer in 1949 has turned out to be extraordinarily prescient in both the field of biology and physics.
The original enquiry from engineer Glyn Davys, which started the correspondence, has since been lost, but judging from Einstein's reply, Davys' question had something to do with animal perception and what it can tell us about the physical world.
"It is thinkable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and carrier pigeons may someday lead to the understanding of some physical process which is not yet known," Einstein wrote in his reply.
More than 70 years later, we now know Einstein's hunch was right on the money. Evidence now suggests birds can sense Earth's magnetic field using special photoreceptors in their eyes that are sensitive to subtle shifts in the planet's magnetic field. This is what allows them to migrate thousands of kilometers without getting lost.
Other animals, like marine turtles, dogs, and bees, also show an uncanny ability to sense our planet's magnetic fields, although not necessarily through the eyes.
"It is amazing that [Einstein] conceived this possibility, decades before empirical evidence revealed that several animals can indeed perceive magnetic fields and use such information for navigation," write researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where the letter was recently donated.
Still, the Nobel Prize winner did have some clues to guide his thinking. At the time the letter was written, biological science and physical science were beginning to merge like never before. Bat echolocation had recently been discovered, and radar technology was beginning to take root.
In fact, Davys himself was a researcher in this field, which is probably why he was interested in other strange animal senses, like those shown by bees.
In Einstein, he found a like-minded soul. It seems the famous physicist also appears to have been fascinated by biological science as a window to unseen physical forces...I am sure Einstein would have recommended this RG question
Clearly, Einstein wasn't always right, but even when it came to fields of science outside his expertise, the man had brains.
The study was published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A.
Here is an unexpected little gem, from 3 giants of animal and human behaviour, Sir John Thomson, John Watson and Karl Lashley. Are we any the wiser a century later?
13 September 2021
From the NS archive: The homing of sea-swallows
28 August 1915: The success of the homing depends partly on the vigour of the birds, and partly on the smiles of fortune, as expressed, for instance, in fine weather and no hawks.
By J Arthur Thomson
Naturalist J Arthur Thomson writes about the homing experiments by Professor JB Watson and Dr KS Lashley where swallows were tracked off the Tortugas islands in the Caribbean. In this series of investigations from 1915, birds were captured, marked and liberated from aboard a ship to see if “these terns are able to return from Galveston, more than 800 miles away, over a body of water which apparently does not offer any basis for controlling flight direction”. Despite birds having “been used by man for more than 2,000 years”, there was very little understanding in how birds, particularly untrained birds, can navigate such large distances. While these experiments may not have offered a conclusive theory to understanding distant orientation in birds, Thomson wrote, the authors “have made a distinct step in proving that untrained birds can return successfully across the apparently trackless sea from a distance of 800-1,000 miles”.
Homing pigeons have been used by man for more than 2,000 years, and still we have no secure theory of their return from great distances to their cots. Still less can we explain the well-authenticated fact that a swallow may return from its wintering in the south to the farm-steading where it was born the year before. The problem of homing bristles with difficulties, and it is therefore with eagerness that we turn to a record of the experiments which have been recently made on the sea-swallows at the Tortugas by Professor JB Watson and Dr KS Lashley. The birds were the noddy tern and the sooty tern, which breed in tens of thousands upon Bird Key. That island was surely predestined for the experiments in question, for it is the northern limit of the migration of these two tropical terns, so that if the birds are taken anywhere to the north they will find themselves in all probability in a region which they never before visited. Furthermore, as Bird Key is the last piece of land between the coast of Florida and the coast of Texas, the birds can be sent out to sea for hundreds of miles beyond sight of all landmarks. Between Bird Key and Galveston, for instance, there is open water for 855 statute miles, obviously a fine route for homing experiments. The technique of the experiments is as follows: A bold, vigorous tern is caught, it is marked characteristically with oil-paint on the head and neck; two tags (small and large, but otherwise duplicate) are prepared recording the date, the place, and the kind of marking; the small tag is tied round the bird’s neck; the large tag is fixed to a foot-long stake pushed down to the sand near the nest if the bird is a sooty, or tied to a convenient twig if the bird is a noddy; the bird is put into a large hooded cage and transported to a distance on board ship; it is kept in good health with minnows from the refrigerator; it is liberated at a chosen point; and then its return to the nest is watched for. The most important general result is that these terns are able to return from Galveston, more than 800 miles away, over a body of water which apparently does not offer any basis for controlling flight direction. Some returned in about six days, some took nearly 12, some did not return at all. Many of the return journeys from distances greater than 500 miles did not require more than three to five days, but sometimes as long a time was required to come from Key West to Bird Key, which is only about 65 miles. It goes without saying that the time required has nothing to do with the rate of flight, for three sooties returned from Key West in three hours 45 minutes, and probably spent part of that time on the feeding ground before reporting themselves at the nests. The success of the homing depends partly on the vigour of the birds, and partly on the smiles of fortune, as expressed, for instance, in fine weather and no hawks.
It is instructive to give particulars in regard to some of the experiments. Two noddies and two sooties were taken in the stateroom of a steamer to Havana, and liberated in the harbour there early in the morning of 11 July. They returned to Bird Key (108 miles off) next day, having probably spent most of the time recuperating around the shores of Cuba. Of five birds liberated off Cape Hatteras at least three returned in a few days, having accomplished a journey of 850 miles as the crow flies, and of much more if the alongshore route was followed. Four noddies and four sooties were taken in a hooded cage on a Galveston steamer to about 461 statute miles from Bird Key and liberated where no shore line was visible. “On release all birds with one exception started east. That one headed west and continued for about 200 yards, then turned suddenly and started east.” They had a strong head wind against them throughout the first day, but two of the noddies returned in safety to Bird Key. On 4 June 11 birds were liberated in Galveston Harbour; on 9 June one of the observers, returning to Bird Key on the steamer, saw one of his charges (a red-marked sooty) resting upon a piece of driftwood in the open sea about 409 statute miles east of Galveston. A heavy storm unfortunately removed all chance of its successful return. The authors are not prepared to offer any solution of the problem of distant orientation in birds, but they have made a distinct step in proving that untrained birds can return successfully across the apparently trackless sea from a distance of 800-1,000 miles. Dr Lashley has shown that for short distances on the island itself the terns adjust themselves to nest and mate and young on a basis largely of visual experience, helped a little by memory of movements, and sometimes by sounds.
There is no whit of evidence of any unusual sensitiveness nor of the functioning of any hypothetical sense-organ. But what can be said in regard to distant orientation? Firstly, it has been suggested that the Hatteras birds followed the coast-line in the direction of greater warmth. This is possible enough, but it does not bear at all upon the flight from Galveston to Bird Key across the Gulf of Mexico. Secondly, it has been suggested that the Galveston birds follow a well-marked water-current which sweeps around the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and out past Tortugas through the Straits of Florida. The current differs in colour from the surrounding water and from the return current which runs nearer the coastline. But the colour difference is only noticeable when the sun is in a certain position in relation to the observer; many of the successful birds were liberated at night, and all were out for several nights; they had to win their way home through rain, haze, and cloudy weather; they homed equally well, no matter at what point between Galveston and the Tortugas they were put down. And besides why should they not follow the current in the opposite direction? Thirdly, it has been suggested that the birds get their bearings visually by ascending to a great height. But, in the first place, they do not appear to do this; in the second place, they would require at a distance of a 100 miles to ascend almost a mile to see the Loggerhead Key lighthouse; and, in the third place, even if they ascended they would not see much because of the continuous haze.
The authors are not inclined to assume any new and mysterious “sense of direction” until they have made many more experiments, and a good beginning has been made. Thus, to meet Duchatel’s hypothesis that the retina of the bird is specially sensitive to infra-luminous rays, especially infra-red, Professor Watson made a special investigation of spectral sensibility in the chick and the homing pigeon, and found no evidence at all of the supposed susceptibility. Care was also taken to test Cyon’s theory that birds (notoriously deficient in the sense of smell of the ordinary kind) nose their way home through the air, feeling the direction, strength, and temperature of the wind as it plays on the olfactory mucous membrane. The nasal chambers of two noddy terns were filled with warm wax and varnished over, and the birds were sent to Key West, 65 miles distant, where they were released at two o’clock in the afternoon. At daybreak next morning both birds were on their nests just as usual. Thus it may be inferred that there is not in the nasal cavity of terns any special tactile or olfactory sensitiveness which functions in the homing. The observers propose to inquire whether there may be on other parts of the body-such as eyelids, ear-covering, mouth cavity-any tactile or thermal nerve endings which may assist the birds in reacting to slight differences in pressure, temperature, and humidity which they may encounter on their flight. So the matter stands at present – the remarkable fact of untrained birds successfully reaching from a great distance a known but invisible goal surrounded by apparently trackless sea. It goes without saying that there are speculative theories galore, but what Professor Watson and Dr Lashley are working towards is a scientific interpretation. Naturalists have appealed to magnetic sense, topographical memory, registration of movements, telepathy, and so on – at least nine theories have been advanced – but the solution of the riddle is still in the future. It is a familiar step in scientific method to try to bring an obscure fact into line with others of an approximately similar kind, and this must be done in the case of the homing terns. In this connection it is unfortunate that the data in regard to homing dogs and cats and other mammals are not in a form suitable for scientific purposes, and that crucial experiments to show what untrained homing pigeons can do are lacking. Exceedingly careful experimental work has been done with ants and bees, which find their way home successfully within a limited radius, and the balance of evidence inclines to the conclusion that most of the phenomena can be explained by the gradual registration of various sets of stimuli-olfactory, tactile, visual, and kinaesthetic. Here also, however, there are residual phenomena at present as inexplicable as the homing of the terns from Galveston to the Tortugas.
Professor Watson holds the chair of Experimental and Comparative Psychology at the Johns Hopkins University, and his experimental study of the homing terns is marked by a greater psychological subtlety than is usually to be found in the adventures of zoologists in similar fields. Thus it is interesting to notice his careful observations on the duration of the nesting impulse when the normal activities have been interrupted. He finds that it remains strong for two or three weeks, and this should be borne in mind, for it gives an illuminating significance to the homing of the sea-swallows. They are returning to activities in which their life reaches its climax, to the continuance of which they are urged by a deep organic impulse, by an irresistible will which is not baulked by any waste of seas.
We are licensed by Natural England to care for bats. However, although we look after those who would be unable to exist in the wild, our main aim is, when a bat is handed over to us, to rehabilitate him / her as necessary and release, back to where he / she was found, or to as safe a location as possible. This is usually when we have been notified about the bat by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) after having been found grounded, injured or in an inappropriate location.
I remember, a few years ago, one bat (a Common Pipistrelle) was found around 12 miles from where we live, and after rehabilitation, we drove back to his / her home territory. The bat was in a tank on my lap and hiding by hanging up under a paper towel that was placed over the side of the tank. The tank would also have been covered with a tea towel.
However, as we got closer to where the bat had been found, he / she suddenly started to move around the tank and appeared to be very excited. When we arrived at the place where we had planned to release him / her, as soon as he / she was placed on my outstretched, gloved hand, with no hesitation, flew off.
I have seen similar releases, where bats seemed to recognise 'home territory' but this seemed as if the bat really recognised where he / she was, despite being in a covered tank and in a car.
On another occasion, we were going to release another Common Pipistrelle, this time definitely a female. As requested by the family, we took the tank into the hall in the house where this type of bat roosted in the eves, and waited until everyone who found her wanted to see her released, had gathered. She got excited and seemed to recognise the people there. Visually?, by scent?, by voice recognition??? Maybe she had seen them as she had flown over or heard them talk in the room beside the eves.
Or just because this was 'home'. We had called her 'Megan' after the person who had contacted the BCT about her and Megan (Bat) flew straight off but circled a couple of times.
Mary C R Wilson , there were very interesting and exciting observations. But bat's 'sense of home' does not mean existing of 'internalised map and compass'.
Eugene Eremchenko
Thanks for your response. I quite understand, but bats never fail to amaze me and the little ones described above made me marvel at their awareness whatever it was due to!
These won't be the bats I mentioned above, but are also Common Pipistrelles, being rehabilitated.
Mary C R Wilson, I share your vision, maybe completely. Indeed, 'awareness' is much better and scientifically grounded word than 'internalised map and compass'.
I think animals are much more accomplished at navigation that humans are. I don't think it is through anything inbuilt, but they are acutely aware of and use all their senses to direct them. Their sense of smell is far superior to ours, so too their eyesight (especially in the dark). Their speed and agility is superior to ours too. They also have a strong intuition. So yes, all in all, I think they do have a much more acute sense of direction, using many external cues.
Bats don't see well when it is very dark but use echolocation and can catch an insect as it flies by:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp5jyZtoTIg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJOloliWvB8
Echolocation as described by David Attenborough.
Hi Dr Anthony G Gordon . Scientists have found that the animals have a "neural compass" - allowing them to keep track of exactly where and even which way up they are. These head-direction cells track bats in three dimensions as they manoeuvre. See the link: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30317656
See the following link: https://archive.kpcc.org/programs/take-two/2013/05/01/31586/animal-magnetism-uncovering-the-mystery-of-a-cats/
Also see the following link: https://www.businessinsider.com/sharks-animals-use-earth-magnetic-field-navigate-2021-5
Kindly see also the following link: https://thebark.com/content/dogs-have-internal-compass
Please see also this useful link: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/animal-navigation/
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