How Do Octopuses Navigate?
May 24th, 2012 |
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Getting around is complicated business. Every year, animals traverse miles of sky and sea (and land), chasing warmth or food or mates as the planet rotates and the seasons change. And with such precision! Some animals rely on visual landmarks, others on subtle changes in magnetic fields, and yet others match their internal clocks with [...]
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Sensing Magnets: Navigation in Desert Ants
March 12th, 2012 |
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The more scientists discover about desert ants, the more impressive they seem. Decades of research have established that ants use path integration – an innate form of mental trigonometry – in order to navigate the visually featureless environments that are the salt pans of Tunisia. They do this by calibrating a mental clock based on [...]
Keep reading »Desert Ants Are Better Than Most High School Students At Trigonometry
February 20th, 2012 |
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This marks the 500th post in the history of The Thoughtful Animal! To mark the occasion, I thought I’d revise and repost the post that started it all. This wasn’t the first post I ever wrote, but it was the first post I wrote (back when I was blogging at WordPress) that got any sort [...]
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