How Birds Find Their Way Across the World

History · Published

How Birds Find Their Way Across the World · 1:32 · Intellect Plus

In short: Migrating birds use a complex integration of celestial cues, magnetic sensing via cryptochrome proteins, and environmental adjustments to navigate across the globe.

A 1:32 short film in the series “Mysteries Explained”, narrated by intellect_voice_01.

Sources used in this film: Springer, “Variation in migration behaviors used by Arctic Terns (Sterna paradisaea) breeding across a wide latitudinal gradient”; U.S. Geological Survey, “Juvenile bar-tailed godwit "B6" Sets World Record | U.S. Geological Survey”; National Institutes of Health, “A New View on an Old Debate: Type of Cue-Conflict Manipulation and Availability of Stars Can Explain the Discrepancies between Cue-Calibration Experiments with Migratory Songbirds”; NASA Technical Reports Server, “The influence of magnetic total intensity and inclination on directions preferred by migrating European robins (Erithacus rubecula)”; National Institutes of Health, “Magnetoreception in birds”; National Institutes of Health (NIH) via PubMed Central (PMC), “The quantum needle of the avian magnetic compass - PMC”; Nature, “Magnetic sensitivity of cryptochrome 4 from a migratory songbird”; Springer, “Sensory mechanisms of long-distance navigation in birds: a recent advance in the context of previous studies”; U.S. Geological Survey, “Avian navigation: Comparing the olfactory navigational “map” and the infrasound direction-finding hypotheses to aeronautics”; National Institutes of Health (NIH) via PubMed Central (PMC), “Flyway‐scale analysis reveals that the timing of migration in wading birds is becoming later”; National Institutes of Health, “Avian migrants adjust migration in response to environmental conditions en route”; National Institutes of Health, “Local meteorological conditions reroute a migration”; Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, “A Stellar Migrant”; National Geographic, “Bird migration is one of nature’s great wonders. Here’s how they do it.”; Royal Society, “One sense or two? Magnetic navigation in reed warblers may require us to revisit our assumptions about its sensory basis | Royal Society”; U.S. Geological Survey, “Pacific Barrow’s Goldeneye refine migratory phenology in response to overwintering temperatures and annual snow melt”.

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