Do you know how the pigeons orient ?

For years, scientists have been surprised by a seemingly inexplicable phenomenon: racing pigeons, known for their seafaring skills, get lost when they were released in a region of the U.S. state of New York.

Now, new research decipher this mystery. The study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology suggests that birds use low frequency sounds to guide and in the region of U.S. birds can not hear anything.

Study author Dr. Jonathan Hagstrum from USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) states that birds create "noise maps" of the surroundings. Other researchers, however, say that Hagstrum's theory is controversial and there is much debate on how the birds manage to navigate so effectively.

This mysterious phenomenon has been discovered in the '60s, when Bill Keeton Professor at Cornell University wanted to understand the extraordinary skills of racing pigeons, which can return home even when they are released in locations that did not have never visited.

To this end, Professor of pigeons released from various locations in the U.S. state of New York. To his surprise, when the birds were released near Jersey Hill, near Ithaca, they became disoriented and flew at random. Professor Keeton repeated the experiment several times, the effect is the same. The only time the birds were able to fly naturally was on 13 august 1969, when they were able to return home.

Now, the doctor found Hagstrum explanation for this mysterious phenomenon.

"Birds flying with a compass and a map. The compass is usually the position of the Sun or the Earth's magnetic field, but the map was not identified in past decades. I have found that birds use sound as a map, using them to position themselves in relation to their home, "says Hagstrum.

Pigeons, says the researcher, "using infrasound" - very low frequency sounds that can not be heard by humans.

"Sounds originate in the ocean. Intersecting waves of the ocean and the atmosphere creates the sounds and the earth. This energy can be detected anywhere on Earth, even in the center of a continent, "says Hagstrum. The researcher believes that when birds are released from an unknown place, they try to identify, infrasound, "footprint" of the home signal, then using it to navigate.

Infrasound can be affected by changes in the atmosphere. Therefore, Dr. Hagstrum studied data collected over time to compare the temperature and wind structure in places where pigeons were released by Professor Keeton. Using these data, Hagstrum has calculated how sound would travel from the "house" pigeons at Jersey Hill.

"Structure of the temperature and wind structure of the atmosphere were such in that area of ​​New York that the sound did not reach Hill Jersey," said the researcher. Therefore, birds were unable to hear, so that they could navigate and fly at random.

"On 13 august 1969, the troposphere has been a phenomenon that has turned the sound back to the ground, so it has come to Jersey Hill" Hagstrum said.

Dr. Hagstrum believes that these disorders may explain infrasound and other mysterious events that have affected racing pigeons, for example a race across the English Channel, which took place in 1997 when over 60,000 birds have left the trail.

The researcher acknowledged that the idea is controversial, noting that "does not mean that we have demonstrated unmistakably that is exactly, but I started a new idea which, in my opinion, is the best explanation for these phenomena, as explained events in Jersey Hill ".

Other researchers have launched different ideas on pigeon orientation, suggesting that birds use smell, visual cues, Earth's magnetic field, or a combination of these factors.

Tim Guilford, a professor at Oxford University, says that "despite the fact that there are few details on which scientists disagree, we know from the experimentally obtained ample evidence that, as a rule, access to atmospheric odors is usually necessary and sufficient to explain the navigational abilities of birds. It is also possible to use the sun as a compass (on sunny days) and a magnetic compass (cloudy days). "When birds become familiar with the environment, they begin to depend on topographic features for navigation, forming and favorite tracks," Guilford said.

Professor Guilford's method Hagstrum says that is "interesting" and noted that exploration of new ideas is a valuable thing. However, Guilford concluded that "the large number of other mechanisms evidence for me to believe that it is unlikely to be secret infrasound navigational abilities of birds."

                                                   foto credit: google.com

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