How Do Birds Find Their Way Home?

[dant]

Today, I was sitting in the Eye Doctor's office waiting for
my daughter, and I happened to pick up the May 2012
Smithsonian Magazine and found this:

For thousands of years, homing pigeons were the most sophisticated means of long-distance communication. The winners of the first Olympics were announced by homing pigeon. Julius Reuter started his news service with them. Cher Ami, an avian member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, received the Croix de Guerre in World War I after completing a mission with a bullet in his breast.

How do the birds find their way home? Decades of studies with frosted lenses, magnetic coils or scent deprivation show they use pretty much every clue available. The most difficult one for us to comprehend may be the earth’s magnetic field. Birds see it, but what it looks like to them, nobody knows. Work by Roswitha and Wolfgang Wiltschko in Germany, among others, suggests that this sense relies on quantum mechanics—that is, birds detect something happening in the eye at a subatomic level. Light striking the retina seems to stimulate chemical reactions that produce pairs of molecules with electrons that are “entangled,” meaning they share certain quantum properties. One of those properties, called “spin,” is affected by a magnetic field. That effect could tell the bird which way is north.

Charles Walcott of Cornell, who began studying pigeons in the 1960s, says homing is “still a mystery”—a reminder that “it’s a mistake to think that we live in the same sensory world as other animals.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Do-Birds-Find-Their-Way-Home.html#ixzz1txcDZr6E

Since it is said that humans have Reptilian and Avian genes, so I wondered
if it is possible for some humans to have this trait as well? Subjective, I know,
but it is an interesting article...

 

[Vulcan59]

SOTT carried an article about it. :)

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244132-How-Do-Homing-Pigeons-Find-Their-Way-Home-The-Mystery-Thickens-

 

[Aya]

I know this is probably the , the title of this thread reminds of me the news on Japanese media few days ago.

The bird escaped from a house in the Sagamihara district of Yokohama on Sunday morning, Kyodo News reported, and made its way to the city centre. After finding its way into a hotel, it came to rest on the shoulder of one of the guests before it was apprehended.

The hotel handed the budgerigar over to police, who put it in a cage and transferred it to a nearby police station.

Despite giving no indications that it could talk, the bird suddenly piped up late on Tuesday night and began repeating its home address – which its owner had apparently drummed into the bird for just such an unlikely eventuality.

Specifying the address down to the number of the house and the block on which is stands, the bird enabled police to track down its 64-year-old owner.

"We had not expected his owner to be identified in this manner," one of the officers involved in the case said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9240683/Lost-budgie-taken-home-after-it-recites-entire-address.html

Practice makes perfect! It is the first time I heard the story about a small talking bird. :)

 

[Nienna]

I know this is probably the , the title of this thread reminds of me the news on Japanese media few days ago.

The bird escaped from a house in the Sagamihara district of Yokohama on Sunday morning, Kyodo News reported, and made its way to the city centre. After finding its way into a hotel, it came to rest on the shoulder of one of the guests before it was apprehended.

The hotel handed the budgerigar over to police, who put it in a cage and transferred it to a nearby police station.

Despite giving no indications that it could talk, the bird suddenly piped up late on Tuesday night and began repeating its home address – which its owner had apparently drummed into the bird for just such an unlikely eventuality.

Specifying the address down to the number of the house and the block on which is stands, the bird enabled police to track down its 64-year-old owner.

"We had not expected his owner to be identified in this manner," one of the officers involved in the case said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9240683/Lost-budgie-taken-home-after-it-recites-entire-address.html

Practice makes perfect! It is the first time I heard the story about a small talking bird. :)

This was also carried on SOTT. ;)