How do pigeons go home?

The research and exploration of homing pigeon navigation mystery can be said to be racking their brains and doing their best, but so far it has not been able to uncover the mysterious layer and make the real mystery shine. It can be seen that the mystery of homing pigeon navigation is really profound and makes people feel helpless. What's more, the confusing navigation of homing pigeons has really become something that can be seen and touched in the hearts of biologists all over the world, but it just happens to be a huge "suspense" that cannot be deciphered and explained.

A small flat-haired bird has the ability to fly back to its nest from a strange place hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, starve to avoid natural enemies, and compete with various natural disasters that are not conducive to safe and smooth homing, and so on. The most important thing is that you have to meet mountains, mountains, rivers and water along the way. Topography, magnetic field intensity and other aspects are different, which are obstacles to homing pigeon directional navigation. However, homing pigeons can still find their own nests. What special properties does it rely on? Faced with such a profound and arduous task and such a puzzling "mystery", for a long time, not only ordinary amateur pigeon lovers are consciously or unconsciously thinking and looking for answers, but even many logical and non-Luo Ji conjectures, associations, fantasies and even conjectures have been put forward. Even the professional biological research bachelors and research institutions all over the world have made detailed and repeated analysis of the pigeon body, from the external organs exposed on the cortical surface, such as color film, eye lens, nasal tumor and oral cavity, to the hidden internal secret structures, such as brain bone, liver, comb membrane of fundus, heart, lung and six fu organs.

In addition to the whole structure and all-round anatomical experiment, the research of pigeon body also involves the field of nature because of the guiding role of homing pigeons. Such as: subtle changes in celestial bodies; Micro-motion of the earth; Some invisible conditions in the sky and the universe that have not been discovered by science and known to mankind, as well as the laws of the movement of stars and the activities of the sun and the moon, have all been analyzed and speculated one by one. What's more, even the "mirage" phenomenon, psychological remote sensing between pigeons and people, the smell of bird's nest thousands of miles away and so on are of great use in exploring and uncovering the mystery of homing pigeons' orientation. These can be said to be varied, all-encompassing and all-encompassing.

As we all know, homing pigeons are completely enclosed in a special racing pigeon box (cage), or can't see the topography outside at all, and are transported to the company's location in a closed train box with any main signs. During the whole outbound transportation process, the carrier pigeons' normal sense of direction has been virtually disturbed because of the turbulence of the means of transportation day and night and the long-term U-turn, not to mention the long and unfamiliar airspace for the carrier pigeons to fly back to their nests. If you want to successfully cross the completely unfamiliar area between the flying spot and the lair without getting lost, the first condition is that you must have absolutely superior ability to tell the direction.

After long-term special research and experiments on homing pigeon navigation, two homing pigeon navigation bases are put forward. First, homing pigeons can judge the position of the bird's nest according to the movement law of the sun, but according to the movement track of the sun, homing pigeons can only judge the approximate position of the bird's nest, which is impossible to be accurate. The reason is that the trajectory of the sun is constantly changing. If we want to know the direction of the bird's nest more accurately by relying entirely on the position of the sun at that time, we must master another information related to the trajectory of the sun. Explaining this meaning is actually very simple, because the nest in time is different, and the position of the sun is of course different. So, do homing pigeons really identify the old direction according to the fixed trajectory of the sun? In this regard, researchers have done experiments in this area: consciously put homing pigeons in a house with only lights for a period of time, and artificially change the biological clock of homing pigeons. At this time, homing pigeons whose biological clocks were changed were taken to a strange place a certain distance away for the actual flight test, which was specially conducted in sunny weather, but the test result was that most homing pigeons who participated in this test chose the opposite direction to the pigeon house. The problem is obvious here. The theory that homing pigeons rely on the sun to determine the direction of their nests, because this experimental result has found a satisfactory answer.

The second homing pigeon navigation argument put forward by people is the magnetic field, which is the earth's magnetic field. Is it true that homing pigeons rely on the earth's magnetic field to determine the direction of their nests? Before answering this question, we have to contact the "sun problem", that is to say, homing pigeons judge the direction of their nests through the earth's magnetic field. The premise of this argument is that when homing pigeons are looking for the direction of their nests, how can they navigate when they encounter the bad weather conditions of thick dark clouds and the sun completely blocked? According to relevant data, there is a substance called "magnetic bone" in pigeon's eyes or brain (this statement is inconsistent). Moreover, this theory has been accepted or recognized by most pigeon breeders, who tend to use this hidden object called "magnetic bone" to provide navigation information parameters for homing pigeons. It is believed that homing pigeons use magnetic bones hidden in a certain part of their bodies to receive magnetic fields, thus returning home smoothly.

Up to now, all living animals that have been carefully studied by professionals of relevant institutions, including humans labeled as "advanced animals", have a quite accurate "precision instrument" in their bodies, which is the "biological clock" or "internal clock". Although this "instrument", called "biological clock" or "biological clock", will have some deviations and errors in timing efficiency due to some internal factors and some external factors, it is generally better because it will automatically correct the time at sunrise every morning. This is a theoretical summary that homing pigeons can identify the specific direction of the nest by combining the time on the biological clock and referring to the approximate position of the sun!

However, some people have conducted experiments in order to effectively verify whether there is a compass indicating the earth's magnetic pole in the homing pigeon. For example, two American scholars, Charles Walster and William Keaton, conducted an experiment: homing pigeons with the same number of feathers were divided into two groups AB, and a small magnet was tied to the back of the pigeons in group A and a small copper rod was tied to the back of the pigeons in group B. After many flight experiments, it was found that both groups of pigeons could safely and smoothly return to their nests in the same distance, the same environment and the same weather (sunny day). Only when it is cloudy and cloudy, the navigation performance of pigeons in group B with copper bars is the same. Pigeons in group A with small magnets all choose to return to their nests correctly, but pigeons in group A fly around. The final test result is that almost no pigeons in group A fly back to their nests. In fact, special researchers also told us that by attaching a magnetic substance to the homing pigeon, it is easy to observe that the homing pigeon's sense of direction is in an extremely disordered state. As long as there are strong magnets nearby, there is nothing like a compass to indicate the weak earth's magnetic field. This very intuitive performance has seriously interfered with the homing pigeon guidance system. In fact, many of our pigeon lovers have encountered it during training or official competitions. For example, before the earthquake, during the appearance of sunspots, or near large power plants and high-intensity radio launch sites, you will find that homing pigeons spend much more time on orientation after flying than in places far away from the unfavorable time and environment where homing pigeons' directional navigation function works normally, especially before the earthquake and during the appearance of sunspots. Such important and irresistible natural factors will cause fatal damage to homing pigeons' navigation function.

Perhaps for pigeon lovers who have kept pigeons for a long time, most of them have encountered such a disastrous experience: under the above circumstances, even if they go out to train and fly homing pigeons, even if they are only within 30 to 50 kilometers, most homing pigeons will not return to their nests on time, including some homing pigeons flying more than 300 or 500 kilometers, even if a small number of homing pigeons return to their nests a few hours later than you expected. However, it always shows a state of exhaustion and panic. The reason is that the navigation performance that homing pigeons rely on was "fooled" by the chaotic geomagnetic field at that time, and they could not find the east, west, north and south. For a period of time after an earthquake or sunspot outbreak, most homing pigeons that failed to return home at that time were able to return home one after another.

However, the damage of nature to the geomagnetic field is generally sudden and temporary, so it is necessary to avoid the influence of human factors on the receiver of homing pigeon's geomagnetic field, and although it is fixed for a long time, the influence is within a relatively narrow range after all. Once the homing pigeon rushes out of this affected area, no matter where it goes, as long as the navigation system is restored, it can receive the familiar geomagnetic field information and modify and correct the flight route during the flight. According to relevant research data, homing pigeon is like a moving semiconductor, which constantly cuts the space magnetic lines generated by the geomagnetic field during flight and induces electromagnetic waves. Because the geomagnetic field intensity, magnetic declination and magnetic compliance angle are different in different places, when the homing pigeon is taken out and released, it will immediately feel that the received electromagnetic wave signal is obviously different from the geomagnetic wave signal of the nest, so driven by the homing instinct, it uses its "direction finder" to start looking for the electromagnetic wave signal of the familiar nest. Then, during the flight, correct the route according to the signals received by the detection ... In addition, according to foreign media reports, scientists from hsinchu city Institute of Life Sciences in Taiwan Province Province, China found iron particles in the abdomen of bees. This kind of iron particle is very sensitive to the earth's magnetic field. Scientists believe that this kind of iron particle is called "superparamagnetic magnet", which may help to uncover the mystery that many animals, including homing pigeons, use magnetic fields to identify their directions.

The great discovery of "superparamagnetic magnet" in the field of life science not only provides more clear evidence for people's previous speculation that organisms, including homing pigeons, contain magnetic substances and their "guiding performance" is affected by geomagnetism. At the same time, this is the first time that humans have found and found a "superparamagnetic magnet" in animal cells. Because the homing pigeon's guiding function is greatly influenced by the earth's magnetic field, there must be a magnetic substance in its body, which can sensitively sense the earth's magnetic field, and this "superparamagnetic magnet" in its body guides the homing pigeon to correctly identify the specific direction of its nest with the change of the earth's magnetic field.

The general magnet is paramagnetic, and its principle is that under an external magnetic field, the magnetic axis and the external magnetic field become the same direction, and will not change direction unless it is influenced by a stronger magnetic field in the other direction. Those who have studied for a few days must know these basic physical knowledge. But the "superparamagnetic magnet", that is, the substance found in the belly of bees, becomes the same magnetic axis as paramagnetism under the external magnetic field. However, because the particles are too small, they begin to return to the original direction after the external magnetic field disappears, and their sensitivity to the external magnetic field is greater than paramagnetism, so they are called "superparamagnetic magnets". Regarding the above theory, we should have verified it many times or occasionally in the actual pigeon release. As I said before, there will be an earthquake or sunspot explosion in the near future after the pigeons are released. Generally speaking, at least 8% or more than 90% of the pigeons can't return within the expected time. This "air crash" has been encountered by pigeon racing organizations all over the world, including several major international competitions. The main culprit is that irresistible natural disasters have seriously disturbed the earth's magnetic field, but after the earthquake or sunspot phenomenon, many pigeons have returned. There is only one answer: the earthquake or sunspot phenomenon has ended the interference with the earth's magnetic field, restored the earth's magnetic field, and the "superparamagnetism" used for navigation in homing pigeons has returned to normal function, thus re-determining the correct direction of the nest and returning to the nest.

Of course, there are also some theoretical studies on homing pigeon navigation. After all, there are some speculative elements, and most of them are "peripheral studies" around the theme of homing pigeon navigation. Do homing pigeons navigate by natural information or by their own instinct and IQ? Because the homing pigeon is an entity and the protagonist, and the homing pigeon is taken to a certain distance and released (only for 500 km race), no matter what the weather conditions, the actual situation of losing more and returning less always exists, which has to make people doubt the "sun navigation theory" and "magnetic navigation theory". So, can we really put forward another conjecture from the angle of homing pigeons themselves? Personally, I think it's okay. I had this idea because I came across an article about the brain research of Edison, a great inventor in the world, when I was looking through some old materials. Inspired by this article, I thought of another conjecture of homing pigeon navigation, which is "brain navigation" or just "IQ navigation".

As we all know, all people in the world, whether working, studying or doing all kinds of things, can only start a part of their brains to think and operate. At the same time, few people can activate the left brain and the right brain to play the role of thinking at the same time. But this "almost nothing" does not mean "absolutely nothing". According to a document I have at hand, after studying Edison's skull anatomy, I was surprised to find that Edison is one of the "few" people in the world who started the left and right hemispheres to play their thinking functions at the same time in work, study and life. Speaking of the problem of single brain function and double brain function, I would like to explain here by the way: this phenomenon is not human's own intention, but is caused by the control or mutual conflict of a certain brain nervous system (the author guesses that there is no basis). From this point of view, Edison's brain is extremely clever. The reason why he became an outstanding super inventor is that he was not disturbed by this cranial nerve system, which is not conducive to the thinking function of the brain at the same time. At this time, I thought: People in this world, regardless of age, sex, Europeans, Africans or Asians, must have the same brain formation structure and location, absolutely only in the left and right halves, with the same shape (excluding those special diseases) and the same function and use, that is, thinking. Of course, the IQ difference between people is another matter.

Why is the effective function of people's left and right brains not completely controlled by people's consciousness, like people's left and right eyes? You can blink which eye you want and close which eye you want? As mentioned above, the startup and shutdown of the left and right brains may indeed be under the control of the cranial nerves, which is probably related to the strong and weak performance of the left and right cranial nerve systems, resulting in that when the strong side plays a role, the weak side will automatically shut down, stop playing or be inhibited by the strong side. Over time, the powerful party becomes more powerful and sensitive because of its high frequency of use and long working hours, while the weak party is restrained by the powerful party, resulting in limited opportunities to play its positive role, gradually weakening, numbness and even degradation. This situation is likely to directly cause at least 90% probability that no matter what problems people think in life, only one brain can exert effective thinking energy! Therefore, it is reasonable that a "psychic" like Edison, who can occasionally make the left and right brains think synchronously, will undoubtedly become a world-class "treasure" with extremely high intelligence. At this point, Edison was able to invent so many things, with such a high IQ, and the answer was settled. Then, in view of the fact that thousands of homing pigeons are in the same geographical environment, the same climatic conditions and the same flight distance, why did the tragedy of returning less and losing more occur? Is the cause of this tragedy also related to the single synchronous action of the left and right magnetic bones or the left and right brains of pigeons? Although there are great differences between "advanced animals" and "low animals" between humans and pigeons, and the shape and structure of the brain are bound to be different, both humans and pigeons have exactly the same function, that is, the function of thinking. Now make the following two guesses about the relationship between homing pigeon navigation and its brain and magnetic bone. . . . . .

This article is from souge. com。