|
Animal navigation is the ability of many animals to find their way accurately without maps or instruments. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds, and many other species navigate effectively over shorter distances. Dead reckoning, navigating from a known position using only information about one's own speed and direction, was suggested by Charles Darwin in 1873 as a possible mechanism. In the 20th century, Karl von Frisch showed that honey bees can navigate by the sun, by the polarization pattern of the blue sky, and by the earth's magnetic field; of these, they rely on the sun when possible. William Tinsley Keeton showed that homing pigeons could similarly make use of a range of navigational cues, including the sun, earth's magnetic field, olfaction and vision. Ronald Lockley demonstrated that a species of small seabird, the Manx shearwater, could orient themselves and fly home at full speed, when released far from home, provided either the sun or the stars were visible. Several species of animal can integrate cues of different types to orient themselves and navigate effectively. Insects and birds are able to combine learned landmarks with sensed direction (from the earth's magnetic field or from the sky) to identify where they are and so to navigate. Internal 'maps' are often formed using vision, but other senses including olfaction and echolocation may also be used. The ability of wild animals to navigate may be adversely affected by products of human activity. For example, there is evidence that pesticides may interfere with bee navigation, and that lights may harm turtle navigation. ==Early research== In 1873, Charles Darwin wrote a letter to ''Nature'' magazine, arguing that animals including man have the ability to navigate by dead reckoning, even if a magnetic 'compass' sense and the ability to navigate by the stars is present: Later in 1873, Joseph John Murphy replied to Darwin, writing back to ''Nature'' with a description of how he, Murphy, believed animals carried out dead reckoning, by what is now called inertial navigation:〔Murphy, J.J. ''Instinct: a Mechanical Analogy''. ''Nature'' 7:483. 24 April 1873. 〕 Karl von Frisch (1886–1982) studied the European honey bee, demonstrating that bees can recognize a desired compass direction in three different ways: by the sun, by the polarization pattern of the blue sky, and by the earth’s magnetic field. He showed that the sun is the preferred or main compass; the other mechanisms are used under cloudy skies or inside a dark beehive.〔von Frisch, 1953, pages 93–96.〕 William Tinsley Keeton (1933–1980) studied homing pigeons, showing that they were able to navigate using the earth's magnetic field, the sun, as well as both olfactory and visual cues.〔Keeton, 1974.〕 Donald Griffin (1915–2003) studied echolocation in bats, demonstrating that it was possible and that bats used this mechanism to detect and track prey, and to "see" and thus navigate through the world around them.〔Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. (''Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think'' ), The New York Times, November 14, 2003. Retrieved 27 February 2012.〕 Ronald Lockley (1903–2000), among many studies of birds in over fifty books, pioneered the science of bird migration. He made a twelve-year study of shearwaters such as the Manx shearwater, living on the remote island of Skokholm.〔Ronald Lockley, 1942.〕 These small seabirds make one of the longest migrations of any bird—10,000 kilometres—but return to the exact nesting burrow on Skokholm year after year. This behaviour led to the question of how they navigated.〔Lockley, 1967. pages 114–117.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「animal navigation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|