Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Original title: "I heard that you can't go out without mobile phone navigation?" The seal has a "sarcastic" expression on his face! "

Speaking of "road nerds", everyone must have such friends, and even they are "road nerds". They have walked many times in their daily life, but they will still be "unable to find the north" if they are not careful.

Thanks to the invention of GPS by modern technology, we can still navigate with mobile phones anytime and anywhere, so that road nerds can find their way home smoothly.

However, for animals that cannot use GPS, how do they tell the direction and plan the route? For fear of your jealousy, other people's navigator is much more high-end than ours.

Seals use star navigation if you have ever looked at the sea from the shore or on a ship and saw a round head suddenly jump out of the water, then what you see may be a spotted seal.

When a leopard seal wants to see the environment on the water, it quickly slaps its flippers and jumps in a "bouncing" position.

Spotted seals, other marine mammals, also bounce (but they do it by flapping their tails). Marine mammals bounce to search for prey and guard against predators, but also to better see cruise ships or kayaks, or to find landmarks on shore and use it as a reference to determine their location.

Moreover, when leopard seals bounce at night, they may be using celestial navigation, according to researchers such as Bourne Merck, Nari Krassel, Wolfhard Skross and Guido Denhart.

To understand how seals use celestial navigation, you need to understand two terms for celestial navigation: navigation stars and loci. A navigation star is a celestial body such as the sun, moon, planet or single star, which is used as a reference for navigation. The square point is the point on the horizon directly below the guiding star.

In the history of human navigation, when sailors crossed the ocean, they would rely on the distance between the navigation star and the location to determine their position, so as to calculate the north-south distance from the equator. Merck and his colleagues have a hunch that spotted seals may navigate in a similar way.

To find out, the researchers transformed a circular pool into a planetarium: a dome was built above the pool, which could project about 6000 light spots to mimic the stars and constellations in the night sky in the northern hemisphere. Then they trained two male spotted seals, Nick and Mart, to locate a navigation star.

In this study, Navigation Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. In addition, the researchers used a laser pen to increase its brightness. Seals must swim directly below Sirius from the middle of the pool, and if they can reach the right place, they will be rewarded with food.

During the test, the researchers randomly turned the dome so that Sirius would be in an unfamiliar position for the seal. Researchers no longer use laser pens. However, the seal can still find Sirius and touch the position below Sirius exactly in the pool.

Man is not the only animal that can observe the stars. Seals, birds and whales also watch the stars at night, and they use the stars as a reference in order to keep the right course during long-distance migration.

At the beginning of the test, Nick and Mart did quite well, and later they were even able to guarantee 100% accuracy. Merck and his colleagues believe that spotted seals have "first-class accuracy" in identifying navigation stars, so they infer that spotted seals use celestial navigation. Although spotted seals have the ability to use celestial navigation, this does not mean that they do use this skill when navigating at night.

We need to do more research before we can get a definite answer. But this at least provides a reasonable explanation for how seals navigate the open sea at night. Perhaps the most valuable thing about this study is that it reminds us that humans are not the only animals that can observe stars.

According to the existing scientific research results, many birds, seals, whales and other animals can also see their own star maps in the bright stars above us. What a poetic and pleasant thing to know that other animals look up at the starry sky as we do!

The picture of the celestial body of the scarab scarab is a kind of dung beetle. In ancient Egypt, it had the noble meaning of resurrection and renewal.

It sounds like a spell cast on the bug, but their unique behavior does explain its symbolism.

First, the scarab hid his eggs in a dung ball, and then rolled it back and forth in the east-west direction, reminding the ancient Egyptians of the cycle in which the sun set in the west and rose again in the east. When these invisible eggs hatch, the little beetle will climb out of the dung ball. The ancient Egyptians did not know that there were eggs in the dung ball. They thought the beetle had some special power and could regenerate itself, so they called him "Cabley", which means "self-rebirth, self-inheritance". Out of this belief, they worshiped "Capri" in the temple as a god resurrected by the scarab.

After nearly 5000 years, Capri has long disappeared from history. However, scientists have found that the once halo beetle is indeed related to the starry sky and has "special power".

The scarab story starts with animal droppings. Feces are the food of scarabs and the material he uses to make egg-hatching dung balls (hatchery).

Male scarabs gather around the dunghill, collect as much feces as possible, and roll into marble-sized spheres. After that, he must put away the dung balls and move quickly. After all, these are the egg balls or food he left to his partner.

For a small bug, it takes a lot of work to make a marble-sized dung ball, so some scarabs like to take shortcuts and directly steal other people's dung balls.

The scarab is very diligent, and the faster he makes the dung ball, the sooner he can leave the dunghill, the more likely he is to keep it. From a navigation point of view, the best escape route is to push the dung ball away along a straight line (to avoid inadvertently turning back to the dunghill). The scarab rolls the dung ball in a straight line, and the route is surprisingly accurate.

Before pushing the dung ball away, the scarabs perform a "dance" in which they climb over the dung ball and spin for a week. The scarab dung ball dance is not done only once: if he encounters an obstacle or the dung ball rolls away, he will dance again. So why do scarabs dance on dung balls?

The scarab's behavior attracted the interest of a scientific team at Lund University in Sweden, who decided to study it. They found that the scarab dance is for positioning. When they climb above the dung ball, they look at the position of the sun or moon and use this information to design a straight route.

Map of scarabs under the stars to verify whether the beetles really rely on stars for navigation, scientists set up an observation area in the planetarium to change the star map projected on the dome and observe the beetles' movements. Three starry skies are presented to test the scarab: one shows only the brightest star in the night sky, one shows only the soft light of the Milky way, and the other shows all the stars and galaxies.

They also put a hat on the beetles to test how they navigate when they can't see the night sky. In two cases, the beetle moves quickly and follows the straightest route: one is to be able to see the entire starry sky, including the Milky way, and the other is to see only the night sky illuminated by the Milky way. If the Milky way is not visible, the beetle will slow down and take a circuitous route.

If the beetles wear hats that block the light, they will lose their way. To make sure it wasn't the feeling of wearing a hat that caused the beetle to lose its way, the scientists tested the hat again, this time using a transparent hat. When wearing these hats, the beetle behaves like no hat, proving that the problem is not the hat, but that the hat hinders the view of the starry sky.

Although these tests confirm that beetles can navigate with stars, and the light of the Milky way seems to be extremely important to their navigation, scientists do not know exactly how the beetles navigate. After all, beetles don't need to check maps or GPS repeatedly, as humans do. They don't need to climb back to the dung ball to reconfirm the position of the stars, but they can still walk in a straight line.

In order to solve this mystery, scientists designed another experiment. This time, they used the planetarium's projection equipment to rearrange the position of the moon and stars. Then they released the beetles to observe their reaction to the "extraterrestrial" starry sky. Much to people's surprise, the beetle performed very well. They danced the navigation dance, found their location under the new night sky, drew and walked out a unique "beetle route" in the test area. As long as the beetles can see the sky, nothing seems to keep them off course.

At this time, scientists sprouted a new idea. This time, the scientists did not project a new image of the sky until the beetle had finished the navigation dance and was halfway along the planned route. This new star chart is different from what the beetle saw before, which does make the beetle deviate from the original route.

Finally, scientists understand how scarabs can walk in a straight line. When he danced on the dung ball, he would take a "snapshot" of the starry sky in his brain, and then, during the walk, he would compare the inner brain star map with the real external starry sky. In this way, they can ensure that they do not deviate from the track. In the starlight of the night sky, scarabs dance on small dung balls, actually mapping the stars in their brains.

I can't remember where I put it. Learn from the star crow. Corvidae birds include crows, Ravens, magpies and blue Jays, and Clark Star Ravens are also one of them.

At the end of summer, Clarke Ravens stock up food for the winter, a behavior known as "food storage". Both birds and rodents store food when food is abundant and save it for consumption in times of scarcity. Each animal has its own unique storage habits and strategies, but the focus of all grain storage behavior is to remember where it is stored. The survival of animals depends on it.

Clark star crows feed mainly on tiny pine nuts. There is a small bag under his tongue that can collect about 95 pine nuts at a time. During the feeding period, Clark Ravens will collect a total of about 30,000 pine nuts and store them in batches in as many as 5000 different locations, covering an area of 160,160 square kilometers.

Clark Ravens know how to store food, but what is really incredible is their amazing memory: after nine months, he will still remember all 5000 storage sites. Moreover, even if the landscape changes due to changes in the weather, he can still find food.

So how do Clark Star Ravens accomplish spatial memory? Scientists Stephen van der Waal and Russell Valda believe that star crows draw mental maps of important landmarks and then mark food storage locations in the relevant locations of these landmarks. They speculate that the raven may have used triangulation to remember the distance and location between the landmark and the storage site.

For example, a star raven may store food near a stone, a tree and a river, and then carefully remember these details: it is 2.1 meters east of the river, 0.9 meters south of the stone, or 3.7 meters north of the trees.

To test the theory, van der Waal came to the storage area of the star raven and moved his landmark. As expected, the star raven could no longer find his storage location.

Author: Belinda Leisio translator: Zou Guiping and Zhao Xumao part of the image source network copyright belongs to the original author Editor: Zhang Runxin ★ Book introduction ★

"Animal Inner Notes meet King Solomon's Ring" author: Belinda Lecio Tsinghua University Press "Animal Inner Notes" through nearly 70 fresh and informed essays and more than 120 vivid and interesting pictures, this book discusses a variety of interesting animal behaviors from the perspective of emotion and wisdom, involving animal playfulness, friendship, death, sense of fairness, sense of humor, IQ and evaluation.... The book quotes a large number of quintessence of scientific research in the field of animal behavior. it also gives a wonderful introduction to today's popular science works, such as "what do fish know", "the talent of birds", "the silent call of octopus", "the soul of octopus", "the legend of crows" and "in pursuit of Doctor Doolittle". It provides a valuable opportunity for readers to easily understand the new developments and popular science classics in this field. A brief introduction to ★ authors ★

Belinda Lacio is a writer, educator and winner of the innovative Animal Society Research Award with a biological background. She has extensive experience in mass communication and has developed many science courses for educational television, museums and publishers. This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), by Belinda Lescio, translated by Zou Guiping and Zhao Xumao, and edited by Zhang Runxin

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