How Homing Pigeons Navigate

goombah99 writes "Over the years there has been much research and speculation on how homing pigeons navigate. The assumption has been they need some novel sensory mechanism to give them north-south orientation information. Theories included magnetic field sensitivty and polarized light sensitivity, other possibilies include analysing the motion of the sun. But British researchers appear to have cracked the case: they follow roads and landmarks and don't require special senses. Birds, it seems, actually follow the longer as-the-dog-walks path of the road, even circling over round-abouts rather than the straight 'as-the-bird-flies' path one would expect if they used absolute position sensing."

Comments

Obligatory...

[Captain Goatse]

Time for another update to RFC1149 ;)?

Re:Obligatory...

[fredrikj]

Or now we know why Google's search results are so good.

RFC 1149

[Garridan]

So THAT explains why my connection always gets so laggy when there's construction on the roads!

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html

RFC 1149

[El]

So, in essence what they are saying is that we can minimize RTT (Round Trip Time) delays when using RFC 1149 "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" by painting huge lines on the ground directly between source and destination? I'm sure network implementers will cooing with joy at this revelation!

Since I'm NOT RTFA about pigeons....

[narftrek]

I must rant in traditional /. fashion. Here goes:

I AM APALLED by the fact that one would even suggest such as stupid theory. Listen up guys: Enough of this silly "they follow the roads stuff" Some of us are actually trying to make money off this "imaginary" magnetic-ion-built-in-GPS navigation system that pigeons DO in fact have. If you keep putting out simple explanations to things like this, you're gonna run the rest of us lunatic scientists out of business. We NEED those government grants!
</rant>

Now back to finishing my 5 assed pigeon....

Re:Pigeon router

[Anonymous Coward]

Rebecca Rees, an AA spokesman, said: "The AA devises 30 million routes for motorists every year, but we didn't realise thousands of pigeons were among our customers."

Perhaps they could use use the pigeons *to* determine best routes for motorists?

If they tend to follow roads...

[sheapshearer]

Then they must also hate Los Angeles...

Let's just hope they don't use airport runways for guidance!

Re:Thats not what the article says.

[SpaceLifeForm]

Not to mention that since pigeons are smart, and they know they were wired for the study, why would they give away their navigation secrets for free? Much easier to fool the humans by appearing to follow landmarks such as roads since the pigeons know that humans can relate to that!