Take a second…Stop and think What is the name of the street you live on? Where are your favourite shops? Where is the local beach you like to swim at? Can you find your way to your friends house?

METHODS USED BY ANIMALS TO nAVIGATE BY MCKENSIE, MARCIA, FAITH AND EMILY

Visual clues Well, animals aren’t that different, they learn their surroundings just as we learn or streets, shops, hills and rivers of our homeland. You may want to write this next bit down…

Visual clues Birds that migrate learn the shape of coastline and other topography of their route. Other animals learn where streams and food trees lie, and most know objects that point to home. For example, a digger wasp always memorises the landmarks around its burrow.

Visual Clues

Now it’s time for a game of ‘what is it?’ What 2007 movie, starring Nicole Kidman, involved me in the title? I am a tool used for working out directions I am traditionally round and could fit in the palm of your hand. You could probably find me as an app. Unscramble these letters to get what I am o-m-p-s-a-s-c

Did you guess? I’m a compass!

Solar navigation The sun appears to move from east to west during the day, so can be used to tell direction if you were to have a clock. Many birds and other animals, e.g. honeybees, use the sun as a built in compass which suggests they have a built in clock. Large migratory birds, e.g. ducks, hawks, and geese, fly mainly in daytime and presumably use the sun as a compass.

Solar navigation In autumn a northern-hemisphere bird flies south at an angle of 45°left of the sun at 9 am, and at an angle of 45°to the right of the sun at 3 pm. When such a bird has its internal clock retarded 6 hours by being place in artificial light/ dark cycles and its then released outside, it sees the 3 pm sun as if it was 9 am, and flies due west. Diagram Page 57 Textbook

Stop! It’s acrostic Poem Time Magnificant Attraction Grippy Net Force Energy Tin? Invented by a Scottish person Clingy

Magnetic Fields One of the many methods used by homing pigeons is to follow the magnetic field lines of the earth, much like a compass. If a magnet deflecting the normal magnetic field is in someway attched to the bird of a homing pigeon, the bird can be made to fly off course y the same degree of deflection.

Magnetic field cont. However, on a clear day the birds will use other navigational skills, for examples sun compasses and visual landmarks,by doing so most manage to get home. It isn’t just birds that use the magnetic field lines of the earth. Whales, dolphins, and even bacteria, are known to have minature magnetic compasses.