Hmmmm... Insects & birds (aka dinosaurs) & fish (salmon, etc.) have these incredible ocean navigational capabilities. Weren't there periods in the Earth's history where the ice caps were all melted, and the oceans were higher (=> less dry land) than today ? Such navigational abilities might have been ubiquitous, because most species would have needed them to survive. Only dry-land non-flying animals wouldn't need these abilities, so they might have been lost. If some of these abilities can be correlated with certain stretches of DNA, perhaps some non-functioning stretches of such DNA might still exist in mammals (including humans) ? At 09:37 AM 3/26/2015, Dan Asimov wrote:
It's interesting that some butterflies migrate many thousands of miles and back, taking something like 5 generations to complete. I find that feat of navigation even more astonishing.
I was going to mention < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly_migration#Range_of_the_migrat... >, but decided that this is more authoratative and detailed: < http://www.monarchbutterflyfund.org/node/148 >.
--Dan
On Mar 25, 2015, at 9:44 AM, Fred Lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> wrote: . . . . . . how did migratory birds manage to acquire the same capability?
On 3/25/15, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I heard a recent program on the ability of ancient Polynesians to navigate the Pacific Ocean w/o clocks/longitude or GPS. . . . . . .