Abstract
Recent evidence has led to a renewed interest in the possibility that pigeons may gain navigational information from the earth’s magnetic field. The various types of positional information available from the earth’s field are summarized and possible position-fixing strategies discussed. A form of bicoordinate navigation might explain some of the magnetic effects observed but the existence of large scale regional magnetic anomalies makes it difficult to imagine how any such position-fixing strategy could provide useful navigational information. Vector navigation, based partly on the pigeon’s magnetic compass could, in principal, provide a bird with position-fixing information, but this hypothesis does not readily explain many of the observed magnetic effects on pigeon orientation.
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© 1982 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Lednor, A.J. (1982). Magnetic Navigation in Pigeons: Possibilities and Problems. In: Papi, F., Wallraff, H.G. (eds) Avian Navigation. Proceedings in Life Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68616-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68616-0_11
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