How Birds Find Their Way (eBook)

Avian Orientation and Navigation

Helmut Satz (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2025 | 1. Auflage
120 Seiten
Springer-Verlag
978-3-031-92181-0 (ISBN)

Infos

This book describes our current understanding of the navigation of birds, their methods, capabilities, and achievements. Our knowledge of this field has progressed immensely in the last fifty years, due to the availability of miniaturized tracking and positioning devices, which now allow us to know when and where a specific bird is located and where it is flying. The book is written for a general readership and requires no more of the reader than a true interest in the topic. The text provides accessible overview of the relevant geographic and geophysical basics (latitudes and longitudes, geomagnetism) and of the neural faculties that allow birds to identify these features. The author surveys a variety of striking avian achievements, ranging from trans-ocean and pole-to-pole flights to circumnavigations of the earth. Readers will also learn how the required knowledge is provided and passed on to future generations, through instinct as well as through experience. Our understanding of such information transfer is today much deeper than it was fifty years ago. Nevertheless, many open questions remain. How an albatross leaving the coast of Brazil can find the way to its nest on a rock off the coast of New Zealand—this is a question still waiting to be answered. Thus, a further purpose of the book is to stimulate additional interest and new research into the fascinating and challenging world of avian navigation.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.8.2025
• Zusatzinfo: XXI, 120 p. 59 illus., 54 illus. in color.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
• Schlagworte: avian circumnavigation of the earth • Avian migration patterns • biological compass • bird navigation • conventional geographic signs in avian navigation • gravitational compass of birds • instinct vs. experience • magnetoreception and quantum navigation in birds • miniaturized positioning devices • solar and stellar navigvtion in birds
• ISBN-10: 3-031-92181-X / 303192181X
• ISBN-13: 978-3-031-92181-0 / 9783031921810