Blog

Eyes are essential for magnetoreception in a mammal

Here is another interesting paper: Mole-rat lives underground and basically cannot see and is often studied to understand how they navigate. Caspar, K. R., Moldenhauer, K., Moritz, R. E., Němec, P., Malkemper, E. P. & Begall, S. 2020 Eyes are essential for magnetoreception in a mammal. Journal of The Royal Society Interface17, 20200513. doi: doi:10.1098/rsif.2020.0513. Caspar2 2020  Several…

To cross or not to cross

Recently Vera Brust, Bianca Michalik and Ommo Hüppop  have produced a paper called “To cross or not to cross – thrushes at the German North Sea coast adapt flight and routing to wind conditions in autumn”. They looked at some of the thrush family (blackbirds, redwings and song thrushes) that migrate across the North sea from the German…

COGNITIVE NAVIGATION SYMPOSIUM: SENSE OF DIRECTION

Recently Prof Kate Jeffery, working with The Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), gave a one day symposium at University College London. Themes• How animals orient – perspectives from ethology and neuroscience • How humans orient – perspectives from cognitive neuroscience • Helping humans orient – perspectives from architecture and design • The future – building a more navigable…

“Those who work dogs in the field seem to enjoy a closer, sometimes telepathic relationship with their charges that ’s obvious if you know what to look for. A good huntsman’s rapport with his pack – “the golden thread” – is much admired, but so are the feats of gundogs indispensable to every day’s shooting”.

Country Life Magazine (UK) issue July 24th 2019 had an article entitled “Every dog has its day” Those who work closely with animals seem to have a very special relationship with them that may not agree well with established scientific thinking.Editor

“Space Cue” hypothesis – a new approach to the bird navigation problem – Vallerii Kanevskyi

Vallerii Kanevskyi has written this fascinating paper that describes how animals navigate but not in the terms of analogies of human navigation such as GPS but in terms of the very essence of quantum mechanics and consciousness.  I believe that this approach will in fact lead to a much better understanding of how animals actually…