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How Homing Pigeons Navigate

Posted by timothy on from the as-the-bird-flies-is-tautological dept.

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."

4 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obligatory... by fredrikj · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. RFC 1149 by Garridan · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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

  3. RFC 1149 by El · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!

    --

    "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  4. Since I'm NOT RTFA about pigeons.... by narftrek · · Score: 4, Funny

    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....