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CUES & SKILLS

Animals use all kinds of cues to find their way across the world
and back again .Land marks, position of the Sun in day and stars
by night and even earths invisible lines of force in the earths
magnetic field are their reference points.

Desert locusts follow a storm . The first sign of a coming swarm

is a faint cloud on the horizon and as it comes closer
sky darkens and is engulfed by flying and hopping insects ;each
locust steers by the sun aiming to reach a place where it can see
that rain is falling by instinctively flying downwind carrying the
swarm into area of low pressure .

Amazing memory of a species of fish of west indies-the Goby

fish out of water is incredible . .As the tide recedes if it is
marooned in a rock pool some distance from the sea it avoids hot
sun by jumping from one pool to next until it reaches the ocean
judging the distance from one pool to next so accurately it drops
right in .
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Salmon use river ‘scents’ to find their way home as some
species rely on chemical memory to find their way home after a
long journey .Actually the Pink salmon of northern pacific
travel 4000 km out to sea from the estuary they left as an
immature smolt .Yet they find their way back unerringly to the
same river several years later to breed . Each river has a small
signature by which salmon can recognize its water way and
earth’s magnetic field controls the salmons direction finding in
the ocean .

Some ants navigate in the sahara desert by taking a bearing

from the sun as they have eyes that can detect polarized light in
the Sun’s rays and the angle at which light vibrates depending
on the position of the sun .

Female blue sharks use the earth’s magnetic field and

Geo magnetic information from rocks on the sea bed to find their
way . Blue sharks mate off the east coast of USA and cross
the Atlantic to Europe to drop their pups .During migration
they check for magnetic bearings using the pits of lorenzini in
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their snouts which can detect electrical and magnetic activity
utilizing solidified lava flows of extinct volcanoes as under water
high ways .
Many birds use land marks but others use the position of the sun
by detecting the changing angle of polarized light and cross
check it with their biological clocks.

Night flyers have stars to guide them and in north hemisphere

utilize fixed position of polar star .

Some birds using particles of magnetic material in their heads

and necks detect the lines of force of earths magnetic field and
perceiving their angle of intersection pinpoint their
position accurately .

Humpback whales journey 6400 kms to and from their breeding

sites finding their way by bouncing low frequency sounds off
familiar land marks on sea bed apart from the visual cues from
sun, moon and stars and the earths magnetic field.
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Like bats the Amazon knife fish and the elephant-trunk fish of
Africa use radar to find their way but instead of sound they use
electricity. By generating an electric field around their body
these fishes can ‘read’ and interpret any of the pulses that hit a
rock or plant or other obstacle and bounce back enabling them
to build a map of the surroundings .