October 23, 2012 • 20 mins
Humans aren't the only map masters on the planet. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and Robert explore the amazing ways that animals turn space into place and navigate the world around them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Bowl your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. We
are on the third Map episode. The last two episodes
we talked a lot about the human experience with maps,
(00:25):
about all the complex ways that we interact with their maps,
how core the map is to our understanding of the universe,
about how complex it gets when you throw in religious
ideas and philosophic ideas and and all these unreal things,
and and it just becomes this quagmire. So in this
episode we are stripping away a lot of the human
(00:46):
complexity and we're looking at the animal complexity when it
comes to maps, because you won't find a lot of
physical maps that have been drawn by like an elephant
or a beetle. But as far as we know, as
far as we know, they may not actually create maps,
but there is mapping going on because because humans were
(01:07):
mapping before they actually made the maps. If we discussed
so we have the we have the neural architecture for mapping.
It's part of how we or any animal moves through
a three dimensional world full of fixed and movable objects.
It's just part of our navigational system. Yeah, and there
are similar similarities between humans and animals, but you could
(01:29):
argue that animals have a much more sophisticated system than humans.
And in fact, the term cognitive mapping was the first
used to describe the superior maze solving abilities of lab rats.
You know, we think about that term in terms of humans,
but that is not so Uh. It is these guys
that really helped us to understand how very well they
(01:53):
can navigate space. Right, So let's talk about the similarities
in the way that humans and animals navigate. For starters,
and something we discussed in one of our previous episodes,
horizontal vertical neurons. We are we when it comes to
like a chessboard, we are nearly more similar to the
rook the little castle that moves up and down side
(02:15):
to side. Like that's what we understand the most. Uh.
Throw in the movements of a queen or a bishop
that's going diagonal, and uh, we're not as we're not
as hardwired to catch those movements into into move in
that way in our head. Yeah, they're stealthie moves to us, right,
And the reason for that is because we have these
sack codes or eye movements, this machinery that really tracks
(02:38):
well on this X y axis. And it's the same
for other animals. Um. And it really makes sense for
us land lovers, animals and humans because think about our
coordinates that we deal with all the time. We deal
with these really vertical trees and this really horizontal landscape.
So it would make sense that that's how we are oriented. Uh,
let's say and co paris into something like a sephalopod
(03:01):
like a squid, in which the coordinates are very different
underwater in the deep and they don't need that sort
of X y orientation which we've talked about before. Like
how incredible it is that they can navigate their space.
If you if you need any proof that humans live
them at X y axis, uh, certainly try doing some
eye exercises where you roll your eye like like the
(03:22):
hands of the clock, and you'll find that it's that
diagonal space in between in between the the twelve and
the three, in between the three and the six, that's
where you're gonna find a little strain unless you've been
using I exercises regularly, which you know some people do.
I suppose we all should really it's just pain. You're right,
(03:43):
then when I do it in a circle, I can
really see, but when I go up and down and
side to side, it's much clear. Uh. So there you go.
That's that's one of the similarities that we have with
other animals, at least land dwelling animals. And then we
have something called path integration. Yes, path integration in a
sense backtracking. Uh. The example that comes to mind with
(04:05):
the path integration is you fly somewhere you've never been
to before. You're on vacation, and basically someone drove you
to the hotel, so you have no real idea of
where you are, but you still I guarantee it. If
you you're in say you're a you're in a hotel
in Bangkok. You can step out the door. You can
look at the end of the street and we're like, oh,
there's a place where I can buy a newspaper. You
can go get that newspaper, and then you can look
(04:26):
down the other street and you're like, oh, there's a
place that's selling mangoes. Go buy a mango, and then
you'll be able to get back to your hotel, either
by backtracking or by taking um a different course, like
you'll you'll have in your head this map of the
places you've been and where you are in reference to
the place you came from. Yeah. Ken Jennings and his
book Map Head talks about this. He talks about being
(04:49):
in d C and going to all these different museums
there and then going back to the Metro the train system,
and saying, you know, they didn't retrace their steps through
these five different museums, basically looked at where the sun
was and where the train was and said, okay, we
think we can make our way back there. And of
course animals do a similar thing, but much in a
(05:11):
much better way than we do, or a more direct way.
In fact, you can look at an ant and see
it roaming around for two hundred meters just kind of
randomly meandering foraging for food, and then once it finds food,
it takes an absolute direct path back to the beginning
of where it was. Um. Such is their homing device
(05:33):
in their in their heads. You brought up landmarks, and
that's another core thing that both humans and their fellow
animals you used to navigate. In fact, we've had studies
which have shown that that fish even can use landmarks
to to navigate the world around them and to reorient
themselves when they've been taken out of one environment a
bit a large environment and putting a smaller one, or
vice versa. And we've seen um each species like jay's
(05:57):
and nutcrackers, their foragers who tuck away their food in
thousands of different places, relying heavily on landmarks. Another good
example are whales in the Pacific who are traveling toward
North America on the west coast. I mean they the
whole continent of North America is essentially a landmark, and
(06:17):
that establishes where they're going to take their turn. And
then of course there's the position of the sun, which
plays into our circadian rhythms. Are this this understanding on
a biological level about what the what the cycle of
the solar cycle it's doing, what the lunar cycle is doing,
and so we're able to determine where we are in
relation to the regular setting and rising of the sun. Yeah.
(06:38):
And so of course animals and some birds can even
travel at night using the sun, and the theory is
that they take the reading from where the sun sets
and then uses that to set their course. And then
others think that the polarization of light coming from the
sun place role as well. Of course, this is all
stuff that we have in common with animals. There's a
bunch of other things that animals used that that we
(07:01):
just don't have access to, things like scent um, even
the like a bees waggle. Yes, yeah, we're not. We're
not so good at using the waggle to navigate. I've tried,
but nobody knows what I'm talking about. Of course, one
of the big differences in the ways that the humans
navigate the world and animals navigate the world our our ability,
or in our case, our inability to detect the Earth's
(07:24):
magnetic field and navigate the world by it. Um. We
discussed in the past when we're talking about bats, we
talked about magnetite, which is this uh magnetic substance in
the bat that allows it to detect there's magnetic field.
Humans have it in their bodies as well, but we're
not really able to do anything with it. Um. Other
(07:46):
animals can do really amazing things with it, such as
the loggerhead turtle. Yeah, these are pretty famous because they
hatch and then they make a ten year, eight thousand
miles circuit. Of the North Atlantic returning back to Florida,
um where they hatched from. And they are very sensitive
to the magnetic fields that the Earth has. Yeah, I
think ever like nine thousand miles thousand kilometers before they return,
(08:10):
and it's a it's believed that they create this mental
magnetic map in their their heads based on the angle
of magnetic field and intensity in the areas that they
travel through. Yeah. In fact, there have been some experiments.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had some
researchers who actually through the turtles off course, but then
(08:31):
the turtles were able to find their way back with
very little difficulty. And they think, again, this is the
magnetic fields, the lines that they're following, and then um
believing that some magnetic orienting was going on, the next
experiment subjected the turtles to a variety of magnetic fields
that differed from the Earth's natural field, and of course
(08:51):
the turtles went off course again and exposure to a
magnet that mimic the Earth's field set them right again.
So this is proof that the turtles can the tech
that earth magnetic field and then use it to navigate,
which I think is fashionating it because to me, this
is like a superpower that which do not possess. Now
that magnetite I mentioned, the crystals of magnetite have been
found in various creatures. It's even been found in some bacteria.
(09:14):
You'll find in the brains of bees and termites, fish,
um again, humans, though it's not only doing anything there,
and in birds, most notably in the beaks of pigeons.
Humming pigeons. Yeah, humming pigeons, of course we know are
are wonderful at navigating and have been used by humans
quite a bit for that purpose. But the studies do
suggest that the bird's sense the magnetic field independent of
(09:36):
their motion and posture, and that they can identify their
geographical position. Now, the reason why researchers are really interested
as well this this pigeon type receptor system is that
nanotechnologists are really interested in learning more for accurate drug
delivery systems based on this receptor system. And I also
(09:56):
wanted to point out that they think that this this
magnetite could be a universal feature of all birds, which
would help solve this mystery of why they can navigate
so well. Because we know, of course, the magnetite helps
the magnetic fields, the sun's position. But there are also
other things going on, like scent. Yes, And before we
get into scent, let's take a quick break, and when
(10:18):
we come back, we will talk about navigating the world
around you with maps made out of smell. All right,
we're back maps, smell maps. Yes, so you know, to
a certain city. We've talked before about as humans, where
we're just walking through the streets of our lives, walking
(10:41):
through our daily environments. Even if we're not actively thinking
about the map around us, our our mind is forming
a map based on the information that's coming in and
the things we're experiencing. So to a certain extent, we
may form a smell map. We may know what parts
of the office are smelly, which parts smell like a
strong air freshener, which parts they smell like doughnuts, depending
(11:03):
on the time of the day. So to a certain extent,
we have a very limited smell bat But it's nothing
like the smell maps that some of the animals out
there used to navigate the world. Ye I was just
thinking about when I lived in midtown Atlanta and on
a Sunday morning, I would take a walk around and
I always wanted to do a scratch and sniff map,
because there's you know, an area that has a lot
(11:25):
of bars in it, and you know, there were very
distinct areas that Yeah, there's always mixed alcohol and the
gutter stink, yeah, and the bleach trying to clean the
sidewalks New Orleans e yes, pop, Yeah, but yeah, that
doesn't that kind of pales in comparison to an animal's
(11:46):
ability to smell an entire habitat it's flying over. Now. Obviously,
we have animals such as ants that famously use sent
trails to navigate. They you know, you see them marching
in their lines leaf cutter ants, for instance, and they're
marching from one place of the other. They're just following
the cent trail left by the guy in front of you.
And you can manipulate that cent trail to spell out
your name, to to lead them off course, to to
(12:10):
to do all sorts of um, I guess, kind of
mean things to the poor leafcutter ants who are just
trying to get stuff done and and conduct their agricultural
experiment underground. Oh you're just delaying them, yeah, because they're
they're they're going to get the stuff. They're they're determined.
But but yeah, So, so there's that model simply following
cent trails. But but then there's some slightly more complex
(12:32):
methods as well. Yeah, because what do you do if
you're an ant in the Sahara, for instance, because it's
so windy and sandy, you're not gonna be able to
pick up a scent, right. Um. So there's a Swiss
zoologist by the name of Rudiger Juaner, and he altered
ants paces by putting them on tiny stilts. Ants on
stilts made of individual pig bristles. And he did this
(12:55):
for a reason, not not just to start a little
ant circus um. He wanted to know how their pace
informed their ability to navigate. So what he found is
that when he put the ants on stilts, it really
altered their pace, and they overshot their destinations by a
pretty big margin, which then pointed to him that that
(13:16):
ants are actually doing a sort of mental math math
calculation with their steps. It was pretty fascinating. And that
we had mentioned the waggle another way that other animals
communicate directions, right, These are the bees that communicate by
by shaking their their hinders and doing a little dance.
The dance of the bees, which is more than just
(13:38):
a celebration of their of their their honey base life,
but but actually a communicative gesture. Yeah, they share geographic
information like the direction of the food sources relative to
the sun, the distance, and then the quality of that
food source, which I thought was really interesting. There was
I think there was an old there was an old
(13:59):
Donald Duck cartoon where he dressed up like a b
to uh, to steal their honey. And I can't recall
if he actually did some waggling. He did some waggling,
for sure, because hey, he's Donald and he's got this
big fake stinger on his his hinder there. But but
I want to say that he did a little waggling
(14:20):
in as a b communicative measure as well. Well, and
I do kind of remember, but the donc donc waggle
that he has anyway, so sort of a natural thing.
It's funny how in kids stories there's so many plots
involving another creature trying to pretend like it is honey
bee or some other thing trying to steal honey. It's
a big deal. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a
(14:41):
it's one of the classic stories, right, The bear trying
to steal the bee's honey. I mean it's a cautionary
tale too, right, because there's something that the bee has,
the human or the bear or the duck wants it,
and it's gonna risk getting stung if it tries to
steal it. So that's right, Which is the whole point
of children's books anyway, right, their instructive Um, All right,
(15:02):
let's take everybody out here with a couple of other
amazing examples of how animals navigate. First of all, there
is this creature called the frill fin gobie, which is
a little fish. It sounds like it could be a
Middle Earth inhabitant theath yeah, or it does sound like
a hobbits name, or maybe a dwarf. But but what's
(15:23):
what's amazing about this little crater Well, it's a small
tropical fish and it's found in rocky pools along the
Atlantic shore, and all that is you know, pretty like, okay,
pretty wrote information. Um, But this is the really cool
thing about this fish. If a tidal pool that it's
in becomes really low or predator shows up, the fish
can eject itself straight up into the water and into
(15:45):
another tidal pool with great accuracy, and it can do
this six successive times until it can find a tidal
pool that doesn't have a predator in it or seems safe.
And what scientists think is that because these fish have
had an opportunity during high tide to explore that they
have been able to make a mental map of all
(16:05):
these different title pools that they can work with in
these situations, because jumping from one title pool to the next,
I mean, that's that's a dangerous proposition if you don't
have a clear idea that there is going to be
a title pool there and then have some idea of
what's gonna be in it, right, yeah, exactly right. What's
the term out of the frying pan into the fire? Yeah, yeah, um.
And then there's the Manx shearwaters. This is a kind
(16:27):
of bird. Yeah, These guys are pretty amazing. They regularly
migrate well over ten thousand kilometers to South America in
the winter, uh, where they use the waters off southern
Brazil and Argentina. So you'll have some of these older
birds that have clocked some phot somewhere the neighborhood of
eight million kilometers five million miles during the course of
(16:47):
its lifetime, like you anytime I think about that. Um
in terms of any bird migration, you know, you think
they're they're they're humans that spend large portions of their
time never leaving a particularly area, and in many cases
lived their entire lives within a very um fixed space.
And then you have these birds that are just true
globe quatters. Globe quatters, they are true globetrotters, you know.
(17:11):
Uh yeah, And actually I'm gonna tell you this story
about a shearwater. Now when I tell you the story,
you try to imagine yourself as this shearwater. Okay um.
In nineteen fifty three, British ornithologists RM Lockley asked his
friend in London to take two Manx shearwaters on a
plane from London to Boston with him a commercial it's
(17:32):
a commercial flight, it was I think you pretty much
do anything. Um. It's only one of the shearwaters survived. Uh.
And when they got to the Boston Boston Slogan Airport,
his friend set the bird free, which is what the
ornithologists wanted him to do. So the friend wrote to
Lockley to tell him what he had done, and then
(17:53):
twelve days later and thirty miles later, the Shearwater returned
to London ahead of the letter. So this is amazing
to me because can you imagine someone stuffing you on
a plane and not having any context of where you are,
being taken to another location again without any sort of
data about where the sun is, any sort of landmarks sent,
(18:16):
and then being able to find your way home. Yeah.
I would just like the first thing I would have
to do is just climb a tree so that the
wolves wouldn't eat me, you know, just like climb up
there and maybe they'll find my body and only that
my eyes will be done. So that's your strategy to
climb a tree. Pretty much. My sense of direction is
not that good, so you know, you can actually increase that.
There have been studies that say that the people can
(18:37):
increase their their sense of direction and their ability to
to navigate better. It's just practice practice. Yeah, okay, well
there's hope for me. Maybe maybe I won't just climb
the tree and die. Maybe I'll look around. No, no
Map boot camp for you. I think Map boot camp.
I'm trying to imagine people showing up from Matt boot Camp,
Like the instructions will have to be pretty like they
(18:58):
basically need to send a bus to your house to
get you because because otherwise it's just no one's gonna
show up. It's gonna be like three guys showing up
for five minutes late, and they're like, where my goodness,
I had the GPS and everything, and and now I'm
I barely survived. I think this would make a great
reality show. All right, Well, there's just some quick insight
(19:19):
into the animal world of maps. How animals navigate the
world informed these Uh then it may it be a
physical map, but they're certainly forming these elaborate mental maps
of the world around them. So hopefully in these three
podcasts that we've we've done to to cover maps, you
you have a different view of what a map means. Well,
not only what it means on paper, but what it
means in the mind of the the human or animal
(19:42):
that conceived it. Indeed, in how much animals and humans
are alike in many ways in navigating this world. All right,
if you have something you would like to share with
us about maps, your experience with maps, your experience with animals.
I know some of you guys out there are dog
or cat owners, and you may have some miraculous stories
about dogs or cats that have disappeared for a little
(20:03):
bit and come back, or or have made of a
long journey from and from their current home to a
previous home, that sort of thing. Everyone loves those stories,
so let us know about them. We'd be happy to
read if you want to air. You can find us
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(20:23):
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For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is
it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Bowl your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. We
are on the third Map episode. The last two episodes
we talked a lot about the human experience with maps,
(00:25):
about all the complex ways that we interact with their maps,
how core the map is to our understanding of the universe,
about how complex it gets when you throw in religious
ideas and philosophic ideas and and all these unreal things,
and and it just becomes this quagmire. So in this
episode we are stripping away a lot of the human
(00:46):
complexity and we're looking at the animal complexity when it
comes to maps, because you won't find a lot of
physical maps that have been drawn by like an elephant
or a beetle. But as far as we know, as
far as we know, they may not actually create maps,
but there is mapping going on because because humans were
(01:07):
mapping before they actually made the maps. If we discussed
so we have the we have the neural architecture for mapping.
It's part of how we or any animal moves through
a three dimensional world full of fixed and movable objects.
It's just part of our navigational system. Yeah, and there
are similar similarities between humans and animals, but you could
(01:29):
argue that animals have a much more sophisticated system than humans.
And in fact, the term cognitive mapping was the first
used to describe the superior maze solving abilities of lab rats.
You know, we think about that term in terms of humans,
but that is not so Uh. It is these guys
that really helped us to understand how very well they
(01:53):
can navigate space. Right, So let's talk about the similarities
in the way that humans and animals navigate. For starters,
and something we discussed in one of our previous episodes,
horizontal vertical neurons. We are we when it comes to
like a chessboard, we are nearly more similar to the
rook the little castle that moves up and down side
(02:15):
to side. Like that's what we understand the most. Uh.
Throw in the movements of a queen or a bishop
that's going diagonal, and uh, we're not as we're not
as hardwired to catch those movements into into move in
that way in our head. Yeah, they're stealthie moves to us, right,
And the reason for that is because we have these
sack codes or eye movements, this machinery that really tracks
(02:38):
well on this X y axis. And it's the same
for other animals. Um. And it really makes sense for
us land lovers, animals and humans because think about our
coordinates that we deal with all the time. We deal
with these really vertical trees and this really horizontal landscape.
So it would make sense that that's how we are oriented. Uh,
let's say and co paris into something like a sephalopod
(03:01):
like a squid, in which the coordinates are very different
underwater in the deep and they don't need that sort
of X y orientation which we've talked about before. Like
how incredible it is that they can navigate their space.
If you if you need any proof that humans live
them at X y axis, uh, certainly try doing some
eye exercises where you roll your eye like like the
(03:22):
hands of the clock, and you'll find that it's that
diagonal space in between in between the the twelve and
the three, in between the three and the six, that's
where you're gonna find a little strain unless you've been
using I exercises regularly, which you know some people do.
I suppose we all should really it's just pain. You're right,
(03:43):
then when I do it in a circle, I can
really see, but when I go up and down and
side to side, it's much clear. Uh. So there you go.
That's that's one of the similarities that we have with
other animals, at least land dwelling animals. And then we
have something called path integration. Yes, path integration in a
sense backtracking. Uh. The example that comes to mind with
(04:05):
the path integration is you fly somewhere you've never been
to before. You're on vacation, and basically someone drove you
to the hotel, so you have no real idea of
where you are, but you still I guarantee it. If
you you're in say you're a you're in a hotel
in Bangkok. You can step out the door. You can
look at the end of the street and we're like, oh,
there's a place where I can buy a newspaper. You
can go get that newspaper, and then you can look
(04:26):
down the other street and you're like, oh, there's a
place that's selling mangoes. Go buy a mango, and then
you'll be able to get back to your hotel, either
by backtracking or by taking um a different course, like
you'll you'll have in your head this map of the
places you've been and where you are in reference to
the place you came from. Yeah. Ken Jennings and his
book Map Head talks about this. He talks about being
(04:49):
in d C and going to all these different museums
there and then going back to the Metro the train system,
and saying, you know, they didn't retrace their steps through
these five different museums, basically looked at where the sun
was and where the train was and said, okay, we
think we can make our way back there. And of
course animals do a similar thing, but much in a
(05:11):
much better way than we do, or a more direct way.
In fact, you can look at an ant and see
it roaming around for two hundred meters just kind of
randomly meandering foraging for food, and then once it finds food,
it takes an absolute direct path back to the beginning
of where it was. Um. Such is their homing device
(05:33):
in their in their heads. You brought up landmarks, and
that's another core thing that both humans and their fellow
animals you used to navigate. In fact, we've had studies
which have shown that that fish even can use landmarks
to to navigate the world around them and to reorient
themselves when they've been taken out of one environment a
bit a large environment and putting a smaller one, or
vice versa. And we've seen um each species like jay's
(05:57):
and nutcrackers, their foragers who tuck away their food in
thousands of different places, relying heavily on landmarks. Another good
example are whales in the Pacific who are traveling toward
North America on the west coast. I mean they the
whole continent of North America is essentially a landmark, and
(06:17):
that establishes where they're going to take their turn. And
then of course there's the position of the sun, which
plays into our circadian rhythms. Are this this understanding on
a biological level about what the what the cycle of
the solar cycle it's doing, what the lunar cycle is doing,
and so we're able to determine where we are in
relation to the regular setting and rising of the sun. Yeah.
(06:38):
And so of course animals and some birds can even
travel at night using the sun, and the theory is
that they take the reading from where the sun sets
and then uses that to set their course. And then
others think that the polarization of light coming from the
sun place role as well. Of course, this is all
stuff that we have in common with animals. There's a
bunch of other things that animals used that that we
(07:01):
just don't have access to, things like scent um, even
the like a bees waggle. Yes, yeah, we're not. We're
not so good at using the waggle to navigate. I've tried,
but nobody knows what I'm talking about. Of course, one
of the big differences in the ways that the humans
navigate the world and animals navigate the world our our ability,
or in our case, our inability to detect the Earth's
(07:24):
magnetic field and navigate the world by it. Um. We
discussed in the past when we're talking about bats, we
talked about magnetite, which is this uh magnetic substance in
the bat that allows it to detect there's magnetic field.
Humans have it in their bodies as well, but we're
not really able to do anything with it. Um. Other
(07:46):
animals can do really amazing things with it, such as
the loggerhead turtle. Yeah, these are pretty famous because they
hatch and then they make a ten year, eight thousand
miles circuit. Of the North Atlantic returning back to Florida,
um where they hatched from. And they are very sensitive
to the magnetic fields that the Earth has. Yeah, I
think ever like nine thousand miles thousand kilometers before they return,
(08:10):
and it's a it's believed that they create this mental
magnetic map in their their heads based on the angle
of magnetic field and intensity in the areas that they
travel through. Yeah. In fact, there have been some experiments.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had some
researchers who actually through the turtles off course, but then
(08:31):
the turtles were able to find their way back with
very little difficulty. And they think, again, this is the
magnetic fields, the lines that they're following, and then um
believing that some magnetic orienting was going on, the next
experiment subjected the turtles to a variety of magnetic fields
that differed from the Earth's natural field, and of course
(08:51):
the turtles went off course again and exposure to a
magnet that mimic the Earth's field set them right again.
So this is proof that the turtles can the tech
that earth magnetic field and then use it to navigate,
which I think is fashionating it because to me, this
is like a superpower that which do not possess. Now
that magnetite I mentioned, the crystals of magnetite have been
found in various creatures. It's even been found in some bacteria.
(09:14):
You'll find in the brains of bees and termites, fish,
um again, humans, though it's not only doing anything there,
and in birds, most notably in the beaks of pigeons.
Humming pigeons. Yeah, humming pigeons, of course we know are
are wonderful at navigating and have been used by humans
quite a bit for that purpose. But the studies do
suggest that the bird's sense the magnetic field independent of
(09:36):
their motion and posture, and that they can identify their
geographical position. Now, the reason why researchers are really interested
as well this this pigeon type receptor system is that
nanotechnologists are really interested in learning more for accurate drug
delivery systems based on this receptor system. And I also
(09:56):
wanted to point out that they think that this this
magnetite could be a universal feature of all birds, which
would help solve this mystery of why they can navigate
so well. Because we know, of course, the magnetite helps
the magnetic fields, the sun's position. But there are also
other things going on, like scent. Yes, And before we
get into scent, let's take a quick break, and when
(10:18):
we come back, we will talk about navigating the world
around you with maps made out of smell. All right,
we're back maps, smell maps. Yes, so you know, to
a certain city. We've talked before about as humans, where
we're just walking through the streets of our lives, walking
(10:41):
through our daily environments. Even if we're not actively thinking
about the map around us, our our mind is forming
a map based on the information that's coming in and
the things we're experiencing. So to a certain extent, we
may form a smell map. We may know what parts
of the office are smelly, which parts smell like a
strong air freshener, which parts they smell like doughnuts, depending
(11:03):
on the time of the day. So to a certain extent,
we have a very limited smell bat But it's nothing
like the smell maps that some of the animals out
there used to navigate the world. Ye I was just
thinking about when I lived in midtown Atlanta and on
a Sunday morning, I would take a walk around and
I always wanted to do a scratch and sniff map,
because there's you know, an area that has a lot
(11:25):
of bars in it, and you know, there were very
distinct areas that Yeah, there's always mixed alcohol and the
gutter stink, yeah, and the bleach trying to clean the
sidewalks New Orleans e yes, pop, Yeah, but yeah, that
doesn't that kind of pales in comparison to an animal's
(11:46):
ability to smell an entire habitat it's flying over. Now. Obviously,
we have animals such as ants that famously use sent
trails to navigate. They you know, you see them marching
in their lines leaf cutter ants, for instance, and they're
marching from one place of the other. They're just following
the cent trail left by the guy in front of you.
And you can manipulate that cent trail to spell out
your name, to to lead them off course, to to
(12:10):
to do all sorts of um, I guess, kind of
mean things to the poor leafcutter ants who are just
trying to get stuff done and and conduct their agricultural
experiment underground. Oh you're just delaying them, yeah, because they're
they're they're going to get the stuff. They're they're determined.
But but yeah, So, so there's that model simply following
cent trails. But but then there's some slightly more complex
(12:32):
methods as well. Yeah, because what do you do if
you're an ant in the Sahara, for instance, because it's
so windy and sandy, you're not gonna be able to
pick up a scent, right. Um. So there's a Swiss
zoologist by the name of Rudiger Juaner, and he altered
ants paces by putting them on tiny stilts. Ants on
stilts made of individual pig bristles. And he did this
(12:55):
for a reason, not not just to start a little
ant circus um. He wanted to know how their pace
informed their ability to navigate. So what he found is
that when he put the ants on stilts, it really
altered their pace, and they overshot their destinations by a
pretty big margin, which then pointed to him that that
(13:16):
ants are actually doing a sort of mental math math
calculation with their steps. It was pretty fascinating. And that
we had mentioned the waggle another way that other animals
communicate directions, right, These are the bees that communicate by
by shaking their their hinders and doing a little dance.
The dance of the bees, which is more than just
(13:38):
a celebration of their of their their honey base life,
but but actually a communicative gesture. Yeah, they share geographic
information like the direction of the food sources relative to
the sun, the distance, and then the quality of that
food source, which I thought was really interesting. There was
I think there was an old there was an old
(13:59):
Donald Duck cartoon where he dressed up like a b
to uh, to steal their honey. And I can't recall
if he actually did some waggling. He did some waggling,
for sure, because hey, he's Donald and he's got this
big fake stinger on his his hinder there. But but
I want to say that he did a little waggling
(14:20):
in as a b communicative measure as well. Well, and
I do kind of remember, but the donc donc waggle
that he has anyway, so sort of a natural thing.
It's funny how in kids stories there's so many plots
involving another creature trying to pretend like it is honey
bee or some other thing trying to steal honey. It's
a big deal. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a
(14:41):
it's one of the classic stories, right, The bear trying
to steal the bee's honey. I mean it's a cautionary
tale too, right, because there's something that the bee has,
the human or the bear or the duck wants it,
and it's gonna risk getting stung if it tries to
steal it. So that's right, Which is the whole point
of children's books anyway, right, their instructive Um, All right,
(15:02):
let's take everybody out here with a couple of other
amazing examples of how animals navigate. First of all, there
is this creature called the frill fin gobie, which is
a little fish. It sounds like it could be a
Middle Earth inhabitant theath yeah, or it does sound like
a hobbits name, or maybe a dwarf. But but what's
(15:23):
what's amazing about this little crater Well, it's a small
tropical fish and it's found in rocky pools along the
Atlantic shore, and all that is you know, pretty like, okay,
pretty wrote information. Um, But this is the really cool
thing about this fish. If a tidal pool that it's
in becomes really low or predator shows up, the fish
can eject itself straight up into the water and into
(15:45):
another tidal pool with great accuracy, and it can do
this six successive times until it can find a tidal
pool that doesn't have a predator in it or seems safe.
And what scientists think is that because these fish have
had an opportunity during high tide to explore that they
have been able to make a mental map of all
(16:05):
these different title pools that they can work with in
these situations, because jumping from one title pool to the next,
I mean, that's that's a dangerous proposition if you don't
have a clear idea that there is going to be
a title pool there and then have some idea of
what's gonna be in it, right, yeah, exactly right. What's
the term out of the frying pan into the fire? Yeah, yeah, um.
And then there's the Manx shearwaters. This is a kind
(16:27):
of bird. Yeah, These guys are pretty amazing. They regularly
migrate well over ten thousand kilometers to South America in
the winter, uh, where they use the waters off southern
Brazil and Argentina. So you'll have some of these older
birds that have clocked some phot somewhere the neighborhood of
eight million kilometers five million miles during the course of
(16:47):
its lifetime, like you anytime I think about that. Um
in terms of any bird migration, you know, you think
they're they're they're humans that spend large portions of their
time never leaving a particularly area, and in many cases
lived their entire lives within a very um fixed space.
And then you have these birds that are just true
globe quatters. Globe quatters, they are true globetrotters, you know.
(17:11):
Uh yeah, And actually I'm gonna tell you this story
about a shearwater. Now when I tell you the story,
you try to imagine yourself as this shearwater. Okay um.
In nineteen fifty three, British ornithologists RM Lockley asked his
friend in London to take two Manx shearwaters on a
plane from London to Boston with him a commercial it's
(17:32):
a commercial flight, it was I think you pretty much
do anything. Um. It's only one of the shearwaters survived. Uh.
And when they got to the Boston Boston Slogan Airport,
his friend set the bird free, which is what the
ornithologists wanted him to do. So the friend wrote to
Lockley to tell him what he had done, and then
(17:53):
twelve days later and thirty miles later, the Shearwater returned
to London ahead of the letter. So this is amazing
to me because can you imagine someone stuffing you on
a plane and not having any context of where you are,
being taken to another location again without any sort of
data about where the sun is, any sort of landmarks sent,
(18:16):
and then being able to find your way home. Yeah.
I would just like the first thing I would have
to do is just climb a tree so that the
wolves wouldn't eat me, you know, just like climb up
there and maybe they'll find my body and only that
my eyes will be done. So that's your strategy to
climb a tree. Pretty much. My sense of direction is
not that good, so you know, you can actually increase that.
There have been studies that say that the people can
(18:37):
increase their their sense of direction and their ability to
to navigate better. It's just practice practice. Yeah, okay, well
there's hope for me. Maybe maybe I won't just climb
the tree and die. Maybe I'll look around. No, no
Map boot camp for you. I think Map boot camp.
I'm trying to imagine people showing up from Matt boot Camp,
Like the instructions will have to be pretty like they
(18:58):
basically need to send a bus to your house to
get you because because otherwise it's just no one's gonna
show up. It's gonna be like three guys showing up
for five minutes late, and they're like, where my goodness,
I had the GPS and everything, and and now I'm
I barely survived. I think this would make a great
reality show. All right, Well, there's just some quick insight
(19:19):
into the animal world of maps. How animals navigate the
world informed these Uh then it may it be a
physical map, but they're certainly forming these elaborate mental maps
of the world around them. So hopefully in these three
podcasts that we've we've done to to cover maps, you
you have a different view of what a map means. Well,
not only what it means on paper, but what it
means in the mind of the the human or animal
(19:42):
that conceived it. Indeed, in how much animals and humans
are alike in many ways in navigating this world. All right,
if you have something you would like to share with
us about maps, your experience with maps, your experience with animals.
I know some of you guys out there are dog
or cat owners, and you may have some miraculous stories
about dogs or cats that have disappeared for a little
(20:03):
bit and come back, or or have made of a
long journey from and from their current home to a
previous home, that sort of thing. Everyone loves those stories,
so let us know about them. We'd be happy to
read if you want to air. You can find us
on Facebook and you can find us on tumbler. We
are stuff to blow your mind on both of those feeds,
and you can also find us on Twitter, where our
(20:23):
handle is blow the Mind. And you can always drop
us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
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