How Homing Pigeons Navigate

Posted by timothy on Monday February 9, 2004 @12:17PM 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."

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Re:Obligatory... by fredrikj · 2004-02-09 12:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Or now we know why Google's search results are so good.
RFC 1149 by Garridan · 2004-02-09 12:36 · 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
Since I'm NOT RTFA about pigeons.... by narftrek · 2004-02-09 13:12 · 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....