Homing behavior

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When homing (also: homing ability ; . English : homing ) is called in the behavioral biology , the innate ability of an animal from an unfamiliar starting point in their own territory or for their own building , nest , barn or home strike back.

A satisfactory explanation for the neurobiological mechanisms that enable animals to observe their homing behavior has not yet been found. As early as 1941, however, a Dutch ornithologist had expressed the assumption, which is still valid today, that - as with migratory birds - the magnetic sense seems to play an important role.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the homing behavior of birds in particular was systematically investigated and its cause discussed in specialist journals. Werner Rüppell in particular did pioneering work here. However, early studies by Albrecht Bethe had already looked at the behavior of insects in 1902. Other researchers studied mice , and later director of the Frankfurt Zoo , Bernhard Grzimek explored while serving as a vet a unit of cavalry in World War II , the homing ability of horses . Bats were also among the animal species studied early on .

Carrier pigeons are often used today as a model animal for research into homing behavior , as these have been bred for a long time to be used in flight competitions. In competitions like this, the pigeons are transported in a special truck to a "release site" up to a thousand kilometers from their home town, from where they begin their flight home. Since all stray animals, i.e. not finding their way back to their home pigeon loft, inevitably fail as future breeding animals , there has always been a high selection pressure for homing pigeons due to this selection factor.

After deciphering the dance language of honeybees by Karl von Frisch especially the bees become a favorite object of study were in addition to the birds.

Saltwater crocodiles can find their way back to their hometown from 400 km away, according to a study published in 2007. Australian zoologists had flown several animals by helicopter from their coastal home area to a distant, also coastal place and released them there. The crocodile, the furthest abducted at 411 km, only needed 20 days to return to the fishing area along the coast. The zoologists at the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service pointed out that crocodiles are relatively closely related to birds and may have orientational behavior similar to these, i.e. a combination of a solar compass and magnetic sense .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Albert Daanje: homing experiments and geomagnetism. In: Bird migration. Volume 12, 1941, pp. 15-17
  2. ↑ An example of this is Erwin Stresemann : Do the birds have a sense of place? In: Ardea. Volume 24, 1936, pp. 107-111
  3. ↑ Werner Rüppell: Homing attempts with starlings, barn swallows, reversible necks, red-backed strangles and hawks. In: Journal of Ornithology. Vol. 85, 1937, 102-135; Preliminary studies for this comprehensive work had already been published in 1935 and 1936 in the Journal für Ornithologie (Volume 83, pp. 462–524, Volume 84, pp. 180–198)
  4. ↑ Albrecht Bethe: The ability of ants and bees to return home. In: Biological Zentralblatt. Volume 22, 1902, pp. 193-215
  5. ↑ for example: Bastian Schmid: About the ability of wood mice to return home (Mus sylvaticus L.). In: Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology. Volume 23, 1936, pp. 592-604
  6. ↑ Bernhard Grzimek : Homing attempts with horses. In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie. Volume 5, 1943, pp. 455-464
  7. ↑ FP Möhres, Th. Öttingen-Spielberg: Attempts on the close-up orientation and the ability of bats to find their home. In: Negotiations of the German Zoological Society. 1949, pp. 248-252
  8. ^ Home-finding behavior of carrier pigeons: Magnetic gradients and landmarks Example of a project funded by the DFG
  9. ↑ The book by P. Berthold, E. Gwinner and E. Sonnenschein: Avian Migration contains a detailed description of the topic with numerous references to historical original publications.
  10. ↑ Lore Becker: Investigations into the home-finding ability of bees. In: Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology. Volume 41, No. 1, 1958, pp. 1–25, summary (with link to full text)
  11. ↑ Mark A. Read et al .: Satellite Tracking Reveals Long Distance Coastal Travel and Homing by Translocated Estuarine Crocodiles, Crocodylus porosus. In: PLoS ONE. Volume 2, No. 9: e949, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0000949