Dung Beetles Navigate By the Milky Way; Pigeons Tune In To Magnetism 82
sciencehabit writes with this excerpt from Science magazine's colorful synopsis of a paywalled article at Current Biology "A day in the life of a male dung beetle goes something like this: Fly to a heap of dung, sculpt a clump of it into a large ball, then roll the ball away from the pile as fast as possible. However, it turns out that the beetles, who work at night, need some sort of compass to prevent them from rolling around in circles. New research suggests that the insects use starlight to guide their way. Birds, seals, and humans also use starlight to navigate, but this is the first time it's been shown in an insect." Also on the topic of How Animals Get Around Without GPS, new research has considerably heightened scientists understanding of birds' sensitivity to magnetic fields. For homing pigeons at least, this ability seems to be tied to a cluster of just 53 neurons (original paper, also behind a paywall).
Polarized Light also might be used (Score:5, Informative)
-- honeybees : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_navigation#Orientation_by_polarised_light [wikipedia.org]
-- squids eyes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye#Polarized_light [wikipedia.org]
-- fishies : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_in_fishes#Polarized_light [wikipedia.org]
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Pigeons have been tested for polarization sensing and magnetic field sensing by William Tinsley Keeton [wikipedia.org].
Re:This is why I love science. (Score:5, Informative)
You dont have to be able to prove anything. You can just make up something and as long as it sounds good then youre a scientist. Hell you can be a good speaker and call yourself a scientist, if you can phrase and word things in a good way you can make up crazy stuff you have no idea about and people will believe you because there is no way to prove that youre wrong. And thats what a lot of "science" is, its saying something that sounds good while at the same not being able to be proved wrong.
"A dung beetle navigtes via the milky way" how you can you possibly prove that to be false?
Obviously you didn't get past the summary, or maybe even the title but what you claim is not science. Science is not spouting random things and waiting for someone else to prove you wrong. Go try that and you will have the credibility of the guy shouting that the end is near. Findings are whats published with procedures and methods used to reach those findings. Others interested can reproduce the experiment to try to get the same results to try to confirm those findings. If they can't reproduce the same results then the original finding must be declared false and reevaluated.
What you think of science is the result of journalists taking the findings and dumbing them down enough so people like you can understand a new fact.
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Re:I have a very amazing and interesting reponse . (Score:4, Informative)
Most, if not all authors, will be more than happy to send you the final copy of the manuscript if you email them, even if you aren't affiliated with a university or a researcher yet want still to learn about their work. In the case of old papers that can't be found on the Internet, which is common for some math journals that are no longer in print, I've found authors to be especially accommodating in sending hard copies.
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