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Nature's Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation
We know that animals cross miles of water, land, and sky with pinpoint precision on a daily basis. But it is only in recent years that scientists have learned how these astounding feats of navigation are actually accomplished. With colorful and thorough detail, Nature's Compass explores the remarkable methods by which animals find their way both near home and around the globe. Noted biologist James Gould and popular science writer Carol Gould delve into the elegant strategies and fail-safe backup systems, the invisible sensitivities and mysterious forces, and incredible mental abilities used by familiar and rare species, as they investigate a multitude of navigation strategies, from the simple to the astonishing.
The Goulds discuss how animals navigate, without instruments and training, at a level far beyond human talents. They explain how animals measure time and show how the fragile monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico--all with a brain that weighs only a few thousandths of an ounce. They look at honey bees and how they rely on the sun and mental maps to locate landmarks such as nests and flowers. And they examine whether long-distance migrants, such as the homing pigeon, depend on a global positioning system to let them know where they are. Ultimately, the authors ask if the disruption of migratory paths through habitat destruction and global warming is affecting and endangering animal species.
Providing a comprehensive picture of animal navigation and migration, "Nature's Compass" decodes the mysteries of this extraordinary aspect of natural behavior.
The Goulds discuss how animals navigate, without instruments and training, at a level far beyond human talents. They explain how animals measure time and show how the fragile monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico--all with a brain that weighs only a few thousandths of an ounce. They look at honey bees and how they rely on the sun and mental maps to locate landmarks such as nests and flowers. And they examine whether long-distance migrants, such as the homing pigeon, depend on a global positioning system to let them know where they are. Ultimately, the authors ask if the disruption of migratory paths through habitat destruction and global warming is affecting and endangering animal species.
Providing a comprehensive picture of animal navigation and migration, "Nature's Compass" decodes the mysteries of this extraordinary aspect of natural behavior.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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179 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 18, 2021
Have you ever lost your car in the mall parking lot? Our family avoids this problem by standing next to our parked car before we leave it and taking what we jokingly call “an orientation flight,” named for the circling flight wasps take to assess local landmarks when they leave their nests (first described by Niko Tinbergen). We don’t really fly, but we do turn around and note prominent, stable landmarks in the area and use those to create a visual map (although my husband inevitably laughs and says, “We’re parked next to that blue car.”)
After reading the new book, Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation (Science Essentials) by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, it becomes apparent that our way of navigating the parking lot is not that uncommon for humans. Our internal navigation capability is, however, fairly unsophisticated compared to the navigation systems many other animals use to achieve some pretty amazing feats. For example, the celebrity migrant monarch butterfly must fly a couple thousand miles to a mountain in Mexico without an electronic global positioning system. What it does use is an internal compass, clock and calendar to arrive at the right place at the right time.
In fact, a number of insects have sophisticated navigation systems, particularly those with nests that they need to return to with some accuracy, like the honey bees and ants. Researchers have shown that both honey bees and ants use the sun’s position against an internal clock to help keep their bearings. In the absence of the sun, the insects can use patterns of polarized light. (Polarized light is the light that vibrates in a definite pattern in one direction, rather than in all directions.) Certain ants have also been shown to have a method of “step-counting,” which allows them to assess distances based on stride length. Finally, a number of insects, honey bees and monarch butterflies being prominent examples, use magnetic fields for navigating.
The authors review the scientific literature for vertebrates as well, from cahows that must navigate across vast expanses of water to a tiny island near Bermuda, to migrating sea turtles. The navigation abilities of homing pigeons are featured prominently, as well as some of the details of the controversies that arose around the study of vertebrate navigation. My favorite section is an examination of the possibility of magnetic map sense in humans, which clearly and humorously points out the difficulties of experimenting with human subjects.
After seven chapters about how animals navigate, the final chapter is a poignant look at why understanding how animals navigate is so critically important for conservation efforts. Well-intentioned efforts to reintroduce threatened and endangered migratory species have little likelihood of success if they do not take into account how the animals find their way.
James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould have written other popular science books that explore the potential cognitive abilities of animals, including The Animal Mind and Animal Architects. Nature’s Compass expands this interest in a new direction (pun intended). If you are intrigued by animal behavior or need to brush up on your understanding of the field of animal navigation, this book will be a handy reference.
Originally reviewed at Wild About Ants
After reading the new book, Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation (Science Essentials) by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, it becomes apparent that our way of navigating the parking lot is not that uncommon for humans. Our internal navigation capability is, however, fairly unsophisticated compared to the navigation systems many other animals use to achieve some pretty amazing feats. For example, the celebrity migrant monarch butterfly must fly a couple thousand miles to a mountain in Mexico without an electronic global positioning system. What it does use is an internal compass, clock and calendar to arrive at the right place at the right time.
In fact, a number of insects have sophisticated navigation systems, particularly those with nests that they need to return to with some accuracy, like the honey bees and ants. Researchers have shown that both honey bees and ants use the sun’s position against an internal clock to help keep their bearings. In the absence of the sun, the insects can use patterns of polarized light. (Polarized light is the light that vibrates in a definite pattern in one direction, rather than in all directions.) Certain ants have also been shown to have a method of “step-counting,” which allows them to assess distances based on stride length. Finally, a number of insects, honey bees and monarch butterflies being prominent examples, use magnetic fields for navigating.
The authors review the scientific literature for vertebrates as well, from cahows that must navigate across vast expanses of water to a tiny island near Bermuda, to migrating sea turtles. The navigation abilities of homing pigeons are featured prominently, as well as some of the details of the controversies that arose around the study of vertebrate navigation. My favorite section is an examination of the possibility of magnetic map sense in humans, which clearly and humorously points out the difficulties of experimenting with human subjects.
After seven chapters about how animals navigate, the final chapter is a poignant look at why understanding how animals navigate is so critically important for conservation efforts. Well-intentioned efforts to reintroduce threatened and endangered migratory species have little likelihood of success if they do not take into account how the animals find their way.
James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould have written other popular science books that explore the potential cognitive abilities of animals, including The Animal Mind and Animal Architects. Nature’s Compass expands this interest in a new direction (pun intended). If you are intrigued by animal behavior or need to brush up on your understanding of the field of animal navigation, this book will be a handy reference.
Originally reviewed at Wild About Ants
November 10, 2016
The fact that a bird can fly for thousands of miles to the same place that others of its kind are going, is already impressive enough to me, given that I can often find a way to get lost driving around Austin if my GPS-enabled device is not doing well that day. The fact that salmon can find their way back to the place they were born, is positively mystifying. The fact that monarch butterflies can continue their leg of a multi-generational migration back to a place they didn't even get born, is as far as I am concerned, magical.
But, not to Gould and Gould, the authors of this book on animal magic. This is not to say they don't find it worthy of admiration, or even awe. To the contrary, they go beyond my "gee whiz, magic!" kind of appreciation, to the altogether more serious and intense kind of admiration called Scientific Study. You do not know what it means to esteem a phenomenon, if you have not had the biologist's near-monomanaical focus on the object of their study.
These kind of people will move honeybee hives around to see how it affects their idea of where they are. They will keep birds inside, with carefully timed artificial lighting, to create a kind of jet-lag effect that fools with their internal clocks, so that they can see how it affects their ability to determine which direction to fly. They have repeated each experiment multiple times, sometimes with minor variations, and sometimes without any variation at all, so that they can make sure their results are robust and repeatable.
By and large, when they have asked the question, "does this animal use X, Y, or Z to navigate with?", the answer has come back, "all of the above". When it's a bird (not a monarch or a salmon), there is also a noticeable difference in the results from new adults or veterans of previous migrations, which means that adult birds get to look back on their first migrations (when they flew in a series of straight lines instead of efficient arcs to get from here to there), and cringe with embarrassment.
The authors make very good use of diagrams along with text, since a lot of the discussion involves concepts in three dimensions that I would have a hard time following if we were just using words. "Azimuth" just doesn't mean much to me, but a picture can help. They also maintain a prudent mix of theory and real-world example, so that the former can be understood.
There is a lot more going on than I had thought about. For example, if a species of bird is using the stars to guide their annual migration, they not only have to deal with how to fly on cloudy nights. They also have to deal with the fact that our star pattern itself wobbles on a 26,000 year cycle, which won't cause much of a problem for any individual generation, but does mean that you had better not have that migration behavior totally fixed in your genetic code.
It appears that some birds can literally see the direction of light polarization, which means that even on cloudy days they can tell roughly where the sun is at any given point in time. It appears that many animals have magnetic compasses inside their heads. The exact mechanism is somewhat disputed, but appears to be related to a molecule called "cryptochrome".
It's as if, when they set out, they have a compass, a pair of polarized lenses, not one but several different clocks, a calendar, and some rough sketches in their head of major landmarks (if they've done the route before). No wonder they do better than I do driving around, I usually have only one mechanism. If I had a backup, and a backup to the backup, plus a better head for directions, I might do better.
While not at all a political tract, there is a section at the end discussing the impact of climate change on animal migration, including how their natural genetic variation can help them (at least usually) overcome it. Any time you bring up climate change, a lot of religious-level zealotry can be awakened in the reader, either on one side or the other. The Goulds manage to dance around, or through, this without letting it distract from a pretty amazing story about how animals other than us, make their way around.
But, not to Gould and Gould, the authors of this book on animal magic. This is not to say they don't find it worthy of admiration, or even awe. To the contrary, they go beyond my "gee whiz, magic!" kind of appreciation, to the altogether more serious and intense kind of admiration called Scientific Study. You do not know what it means to esteem a phenomenon, if you have not had the biologist's near-monomanaical focus on the object of their study.
These kind of people will move honeybee hives around to see how it affects their idea of where they are. They will keep birds inside, with carefully timed artificial lighting, to create a kind of jet-lag effect that fools with their internal clocks, so that they can see how it affects their ability to determine which direction to fly. They have repeated each experiment multiple times, sometimes with minor variations, and sometimes without any variation at all, so that they can make sure their results are robust and repeatable.
By and large, when they have asked the question, "does this animal use X, Y, or Z to navigate with?", the answer has come back, "all of the above". When it's a bird (not a monarch or a salmon), there is also a noticeable difference in the results from new adults or veterans of previous migrations, which means that adult birds get to look back on their first migrations (when they flew in a series of straight lines instead of efficient arcs to get from here to there), and cringe with embarrassment.
The authors make very good use of diagrams along with text, since a lot of the discussion involves concepts in three dimensions that I would have a hard time following if we were just using words. "Azimuth" just doesn't mean much to me, but a picture can help. They also maintain a prudent mix of theory and real-world example, so that the former can be understood.
There is a lot more going on than I had thought about. For example, if a species of bird is using the stars to guide their annual migration, they not only have to deal with how to fly on cloudy nights. They also have to deal with the fact that our star pattern itself wobbles on a 26,000 year cycle, which won't cause much of a problem for any individual generation, but does mean that you had better not have that migration behavior totally fixed in your genetic code.
It appears that some birds can literally see the direction of light polarization, which means that even on cloudy days they can tell roughly where the sun is at any given point in time. It appears that many animals have magnetic compasses inside their heads. The exact mechanism is somewhat disputed, but appears to be related to a molecule called "cryptochrome".
It's as if, when they set out, they have a compass, a pair of polarized lenses, not one but several different clocks, a calendar, and some rough sketches in their head of major landmarks (if they've done the route before). No wonder they do better than I do driving around, I usually have only one mechanism. If I had a backup, and a backup to the backup, plus a better head for directions, I might do better.
While not at all a political tract, there is a section at the end discussing the impact of climate change on animal migration, including how their natural genetic variation can help them (at least usually) overcome it. Any time you bring up climate change, a lot of religious-level zealotry can be awakened in the reader, either on one side or the other. The Goulds manage to dance around, or through, this without letting it distract from a pretty amazing story about how animals other than us, make their way around.
February 4, 2013
The Goulds early on state that an animal’s ability to know its location and the direction of its goal is one of the greatest mysteries of science. After reading this work I am optimistic that someday scientist will solve this mystery.
November 11, 2012
Very interesting, but somewhat technical. Required a lot of concentration
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February 11, 2013Featured on Skeptically Speaking show #198 on February 1, 2013, during an interview with co-author James Gould. http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episode...
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April 5, 2013591.568 G697 2012
November 8, 2013
A great topic but a little too technical for me. I skimmed the last half to one-third of the book.
Read
January 18, 2015Very technical
January 30, 2019
If humans find it difficult to find their way back to their own cars in the parking lot, check out animals which demonstrate far superior navigation skills.
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\n And if there is an animal lover in you willing to study intricate, in built, navigation mechanisms found in nature, this book can help open a whole new world to our minds.
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\n And if there is an animal lover in you willing to study intricate, in built, navigation mechanisms found in nature, this book can help open a whole new world to our minds.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews