Nature's Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation

311 Pages·2012·5.17 MB·English

by  James L. Gould, Carol Grant Gould

Nature’s Compass
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Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation,
by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould
Nature’s Compass
The Mystery of Animal Navigation
James L. Gould
Carol Grant Gould
PRINCeToN UNIveRSITY PReSS
Princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
Jacket photograph: Canadian geese migration in sunset, © Alaska Stock Images/National
Geographic Stock
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gould, James L., 1945–
Nature’s compass : the mystery of animal navigation / James L. Gould,
Carol Grant Gould.
p. cm.—(Science essentials)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14045-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Animal navigation. I. Gould,
Carol Grant. II. Title.
QL782.G68 2012
591.56′8—dc23 2011035086
British Library Cataloging-i n- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in in Minion and Myriad
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For verity,
whose loft may be found at
42°06′54.72″N
71°06′43.59″W
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Navigating— Problems and Strategies 1
2 When and Where 19
3 A Matter of Time 35
4 Insect Compasses 69
5 vertebrate Compasses 117
6 Piloting and Inertial Navigation 155
7 The Map Sense 185
8 Migration and the Future: Conservation and extinction 227
Bibliography 245
Illustration Credits 281
Index 289
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Preface
. . . and they spend their winters upon the moon.
This was the deduction of the “person of learning and piety” who
published a treatise in 1703 on
the probable solution of this question: whence come the
stork and the turtle, and the crane and the swallow, when
they know and observe the appointed time of their com-
ing— or where those birds do probably make their recess
and abode, which are absent from our climate at some cer-
tain times and seasons of the year?
The idea that migrants might overwinter on the moon may have
fallen out of fashion, but not our sense of awe at the seemingly ef-
fortless way many animals come and go as they choose. Migrating
animals have always been a mystery, appearing unexpectedly and
vanishing again, en route from an unidentified home to an un-
known destination— a living allegory of human existence. As the
eighth- century scholar and historian the Venerable Bede (731)
wrote in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, “The life of
man is but a moment of existence.”
Consider the swift flight of a sparrow through the room in
which we sit at supper in winter, while darkness and a snow-
ix