Birds and bees
by
, May 28th, 2018 at 04:58 PM (761 Views)
Someone did an experiment where they captured some small birds just before they made a North-South migratory flight of over a thousand miles, put them in closed boxes, and transported them East-West, sideways the same sort of distance. Not a very nice thing to do I thought, but it worked out. They put micro trackers on the birds and released them, thinking they might return to where they were captured, or they might be completely lost, they had been in closed boxes for the journey. Neither, they flew straight to their winter site along the unfamiliar side of the triangle.
There was a different experiment with bees where bees followed a feeding station as it was taken around a building. The bees that followed it stuck to that route, but the bees they danced for in the hive flew straight to it over the top of the building. They were not told how to get there, but where it was.
Both birds and bees knew where their destination was. Not like I would know, in relation to other things, but in absolute terms, more like a mariner setting course with a sextant from an unknown port for an island at known coordinates. Except they only have tiny brains, can’t do math and don’t have sextants, stunning!