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| Synopsis |
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Animal migration is a phenomenon which has existed since the dawn of time. The wandering albatross flies the equivalent of four and a half times round the world each year yet can still make its way back to the tiny island where it hatched after as many as ten years at sea. How do they and other species do it? |
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After decades of research scientists are now at the threshold of understanding the mechanics of this extraordinary ability. In this film, experts from around the world attempt to unlock homing secrets with a little help from the humble pigeon whose talent for finding their way home from remote, unfamiliar release sites is legendary. Theories involving keen sight and smell have moved on to more controversial theories of magnetic navigation and morphic fields which pull the animals back home. The film will culminate in a groundbreaking experiment which will answer one of the last great mysteries of existence. |
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more… |
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The tiny Arctic tern flies 14,000 miles from the Farne Islands to Australia when it is three months old. In the course of its life, a Manx shearwater will travel 5,000,000 miles. A baby turtle will cross the Atlantic and end up in the same spot off Florida 10 years later. But how do these migrating creatures navigate? |
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Harry Marshall, producer of Paranormal Pigeons, says pigeons are "the key to unlocking this mystery". They are able to return to their lofts even when they've been released in an unfamiliar location hundreds of miles away, yet scientists have failed to agree on a reason why. |
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Dr Tim Guilford of Oxford University thinks they do it by using visual landmarks. Guilford, himself a champion paraglider, says: "When you're flying you realise that what is normally a three dimensional landscape becomes very two dimensional, almost map- like. I think that’s the way birds see the world." |
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Professor Wolfgang and Dr Roswitha Wiltschko of Frankfurt University believe it's down to magnetism. They claim that pigeons have a compass in their eye and a magnetometer in their beak to measure the intensity of the earth's magnetic field, and thus whether they are north or south of home. Roswitha says: "You know when you are standing upright and I think it's something similar to that." |
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A third theory comes from Dr Anna Gagliardo, who believes that pigeons navigate by smell. Gagliardo, from the University of Pisa, claims the birds follow scents blown in on the winds. Harry Marshall agrees. "It's not about following a scent trail," he says. "Each landscape has its own olfactory signature. The birds then remember where these lie in relation to each other, like a patchwork of odours." |
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But one man disagrees with all these theories. Dr Rupert Sheldrake believes that animals use what he calls "morphic resonance". He thinks that there is a memory in nature, and that objects resonate with it, so that pigeons will return to their loft as if attached by an invisible elastic band that stretches through the cosmos. In a cunning experiment, the Paranormal Pigeon team set out to test his hypothesis. With the help of Ragsy, a pigeon fancier, pigeons were raised in a shed in Sharpness Docks in Gloucestershire. The loft was floated a few miles up and down the canal, showing the pigeons that their home could move - not something that they would ever have come across. Then the loft, minus its inhabitants, was towed out to sea and the pigeons were released from Sharpness. Ragsy waited by the shed, growing increasingly seasick. Eventually the floating shed was towed back. The pigeons were sitting waiting, 55 hours later, when their home reappeared. The cosmic elastic band seemed to have snapped! |
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Copyright 2006 Independent Newspapers UK Limited |
Click on these links to learn more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homingpigeon |
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