What Guides Those Pigeons
As someone who frequently gets lost, I’m amazed that migratory birds can always find their way home. Sometimes they fly thousands of kilometres without once going astray.
Homing pigeons in particular have an uncanny ability to find their way home. Bird experts, still can’t fully account for the pigeon’s point to point navigational skills. We know they don’t get home on the basis of good eyesight, because even if fitted with frosted contact lenses they still make it home safely!
Most experts now think that pigeons use multiple clues to help them navigate. They seem to be able to read the position of the sun and stars to make a general orientation. It also seems that pigeon brains have an ability to detect variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. Some biologists believe that smell also plays an important role.
We also know that pigeons are extremely sensitive to small changes in barometric pressure. This sensitivity not only helps them hold a steady course, but warns them of advancing weather fronts. Pigeons can sense altitude changes as small as three metres.
Pigeons are also able to hear very low frequency sounds. Although they are inaudible to us, such sound waves could well provide a marked pathway which pigeons use to find their way home.
So next time someone calls you a ‘bird brain’ accept a compliment.
Why is it that, while animals and birds so unerringly find their direction, we human beings so often lose our way. We need maps and guidance systems to accomplish what creatures of nature do by instinct.
Who hasn't lost their way and found themselves in strange surroundings? Who hasn't taken a wrong turn, or driven past the proper exit? True, some of us have better directional skills that others, but we generally lack the precision and pin-point accuracy of other creatures.
Thankfully, we have the brainpower and inventiveness that enables us to compensate for what we lack in that department. A compass in the jungle or on the open sea has been a blessing to many a lost traveller. Road maps may seem primitive in comparison to some current technological advances, but a wonderful life-saver for the ordinary motorist. And the simple expedient of asking directions at the local gas station can work wonders.
So, next time you lose your way don't envy the animals and birds too much. There are other ways of finding our way than instinct and guesswork.
Tragically, human beings have other ways of losing their way than by taking the wrong highway, or catching the wrong train. Too many of us have lost our moral compass and can no longer distinguish clearly between right and wrong. We seem reluctant these days to draw clear lines between right and wrong moral behaviour. "Let everyone do what is right in his or her own eyes," seems to be the acceptable motto of our day. We are content with that philosophy until what is right to someone else intrudes on our own rights and freedoms.
Individually, making the wrong moral decision can not only hurt others, but also do us personal harm. The decision to drink and drive; the tendency to lie and steal; the temptation to be unfaithful to our spouses, may have consequences we are unprepared to deal with.
Wouldn't it be within the bounds of sound logic to seek an absolute standard of moral behaviour. Then, even when we depart from it, we'll at least know where we are.
David Humphreys and Christopher Shennan
© August 2004
