Научно-издательский центрDOI: 10.38006/00187-838-4.2024.285.286
Н. С. Чернецов
Зоологический институт РАН, Санкт-Петербург
Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, Санкт-Петербург
The ability of many birds to perform long-distance migration is widely known. Besides, many birds are philopatric, i.e. they can return to their natal or former breeding site with great accuracy after migrating for many hundreds and thousands of kilometers. It necessitates the existence of the ability for true navigation in migrating birds, since the area to which they show fidelity is too small to be found by chance or by only crude mechanisms. In mid-20th century Gustav Kramer proposed the map and compass concept which postulates that a migrating bird (or any animal performing long-distance movements, for that matter) should have both a positioning system (a map) and a compass system. They are tightly linked but remain as two separate systems. Most students of avian navigation agree that migrating birds have three different compass systems: the Sun compass, the star compass and the magnetic compass. The mechanisms underlying the magnetic compass are most intriguing, still not fully understood, and, after all, they are the subject of many researches. Avian navigational maps seem to be based both on the geomagnetic field and on olfactory gradients. Olfactory maps of birds are the subject of many debates; with some good experimental evidence supporting their existence at least in homing pigeons and seabirds, but with some theoretical issues unresolved.