Just a few more bits of info re: homing pigeons. I work with a guy who breeds racing pigeons, and he’s informed me that:
They are trained. You let them fly around their home (called a “loft”) until they start to recognize landmarks. Then you gradually take them farther & farther away from home and let them go (generally along the same route / general direction of the races they’ll be in) so they know how to get home once they get within, say 40 - 50 miles of home.
Fog, bad weather, and wind / weather from the North & West really screw up their navigation. Even people that normally get a 75%+ return on their birds lose quite a few when the weather’s changing.
So…maybe the sun does have something to do with it.
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Why would winds from the North and West matter, but not South and East? Does this have something to do with the direction in which your colleague has his pigeons usually fly?
OK, I asked him about the directions. I was wrong, it’s winds out of the Northeast that goof them up.
He says that part of it is probably the direction they fly (since they fly mostly Southwest - Northeast). However, he says there are also clubs in Texas that “fly the circle”, that is, they have a rotating set of launch points, so they start from a different place every year, and therefore no consistent direction to fly in. The birds in the Texas races <b>also</b> seem to have the biggest problem with winds out of the Northeast, regardless of flight direction.
We were speculating that perhaps this is unique to North American birds; that maybe they’ve developed some sort of “instinct” that winds out of the Northeast usually mean really evil weather and to just “land and wait it out” (thereby rendering themselves more vulnerable to predation). They’re not really sure exactly <b>why</b> the NE winds affect the birds like that.
I grew up in Henrico county, VA (west side of Richmond). A neighbor moved to Chesterfield (south side of Richmond). Their dog ran away twice and ended up back in Henrico both times after 2 or 3 days, having to cross the James River to do it. I would estimate that it was a 20 to 25 mile trip.
I have no hard evidence to back up this speculation, but I’ll throw it out anyway.
Maybe when a dog finds itself far from home, it randomly picks a direction and decides that home is THAT way. It might use any number of the commonly-discussed techniques to continue in roughly that initially-chosen direction.
Now let a hundred dogs go loose 20 miles from home. The vast majority of them will doggedly trudge in the wrong direction, becoming hopelessly lost. A few will get close enough to find some familliar sight or smell (the meat packing plant?) and find their way into Readers Digest’s “1001 Favorite Heart Warming Stories”.
Consider the simple fact that there are thousands of stray dogs that quietly disappear for each “homing” dog that goes down in history.
Let’s not forget sea turtles and salmon in the homing department.
But as for Monarch butterflies: “…somehow the species as a whole knows which Mexican “butterfly trees” to return to every winter, even though three to five generations may intervene between one visit and the next.” Now, what does this mean? I doubt that the descendants of a specific Monarch return to a specific tree - who could have tracked that down? How big a stand of trees are we talking about, anyhow? How does the geographic spread of these trees compare with the size of the Great Lakes? And are we talking about one species of tree here? It doesn’t seem so remarkable if the butterflies fly 2,000 miles and then seek out a certain kind of tree that grows over a pretty large area of the country.
As for remarkable homing feats by dogs (20-25 miles or more), I read recently about someone who had a striking dream about tall buildings being hit by planes - the night before 9/11. So, is there something here? I don’t know. I would expect more people to have had prophetic dreams about this, especially the professional psychics. If precognition is so rare (and even for “gifted” individuals, so unreliable), then maybe it is just coincidence.
Or maybe the dog had been on that route before.
Or maybe the dog was downwind of home and there was something really odorous in that direction.
vknowles, you can apply sford’s point to this as well - there are millions of people in America and for one of them to have this dream is not unusual - I am sure that the dream has been had before as well, especially since it was used in a book by Tom Clancy (author?).
This is ever so slightly off topic. Some friends of mine own a bloodhound here in a busy section of Chicago. They have a friend, John, who the dog is well acquainted with. John moved to a new apartment about a mile north of my friends (he also moved from a place about a mile away). They hadn’t seen John in about a week or so and didn’t know where John moved to so they took the dog out on a walk and told him to find John and he took them right to his new apartment building. John wasn’t in.
I was a paperboy and when I went to get my papers, I used a path through some weeds and across railroad tracks. On the other side was the house of some customers and friends. Their dog, Lassie, took to following me all along my paper route. I enjoyed the company.
One day Lassie wasn’t there. They could take care of him anymore and gave him to a cousin with several acres of land about 12 miles away.
One morning, as I crossed the track, there was Lassie. He was dirty and tired, but healthy. The owners kept him, because he was obviously going to keep coming back.
In this case, I think it was the railroad tracks. That’s pretty smart. Smarter than some people.
I believe it screws them up if they don’t have other cues. One of the problems in studying pigeon homing is that they have multiple redundant systems. They can use landmarks, sun cues (including polarized light), and magnetism. Researchers were very puzzled when they would knock out one system (as by putting opaque contact lenses on the birds) and the birds still found their way home. You have to screw up several systems before the birds finally get lost.
[[Now, what does this mean? I doubt that the descendants of a specific Monarch return to a specific tree - who could have tracked that down? How big a stand of trees are we talking about, anyhow? How does the geographic spread of these trees compare with the size of the Great Lakes? And are we talking about one species of tree here? It doesn’t seem so remarkable if the butterflies fly 2,000 miles and then seek out a certain kind of tree that grows over a pretty large area of the country.]]
It actually is a fairly small, specific area in the mountains in southern Mexico where the monarchs congregate. It is small enough that it was only discovered recently after many years of searching by naturalists (who knew it must be around there somewhere). We had such a monarch butterfly migration stopping spot in Natural Bridges state park, Santa Cruz, California. Pretty spectacular thing to see.
Jill
(and you remember my dog, Louie…)
BUTTERFLIES AREN’T THE ONLY LONG DISTANCE TRAVELERS WHO RETURN TO THE SAME PLACE.
AT MY HOME IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, A FAMILY OF HUMMINGBIRDS RETURNS EVERY YEAR TO THE HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER ON MY PORCH, WHERE THEY GORGE THEMSELVES HAPPY, BREED AND NEST IN THE PINE TREE NEXT TO THE HOUSE. I UNDERSTAND THAT THESE LITTLE BUGGERS (SCARCELY LARGER THAN BUMBLEBEES)LEAVE UPSTATE NEW YORK IN THE FALL AND FLY TO THE YUCATAN IN MEXICO, WHICH INCLUDES A NON-STOP 300 MILE JAUNT ACROSS THE GULF OF MEXICO.
AND NOT ONLY ARE THEY INCREDIBLE NAVIGATORS, IF I ALLOW THE FEEDER TO STAY EMPTY, THEY WILL BUZZ MY HEAD AS I SIT ON THE PORCH UNTIL I GIVE THEM A REFILL. I’VE SEEN THEM DO THIS MORE THAN ONCE. SMART LITTLE GUYS AND GIRLS, NO?
Um, interesting first post BEEZEEL, but please don’t write in all caps. That’s considered shouting. Welcome to The Straight Dope Message Board; just remember to use your indoor voice.