It has been said that the Sahara desert ant, Cataglyphis fortis, is a navigational miracle. These tiny insects live in the barren salt pans of North Africa, where ground temperatures soar to 145 F — too hot for almost any animal to survive. They live underground and leave their nests at the hottest time of day to avoid predators and to forage for food (typically other insects that have died of exposure). To avoid being burned to a crisp themselves, the ants must be as efficient as possible in returning to their nest. How does the desert ant find its way back, sometimes over distances of 100 meters, via the fastest route? The answer, our guest, award-winning author David Barrie writes, is astounding and flat-out humbling. So too is the ingenuity of the scientists who study them. Here, he writes, is “a small insect capable of performing navigational feats that we humans can only manage with the help of instruments.”
As Barrie writes, the ants determine where they are at a given time by measuring the angles of their turns (by using the sun’s patterns of polarized light in the sky as a compass) and by measuring the distances they travel (by counting their steps, like a natural odometer). They then integrate this information, a process humans call “dead reckoning” and relied upon for marine navigation into the mid-18th century. The ants’ navigational toolkit also includes the ability to rely on visual landmarks, the direction of wind, micro-vibrations, and scent. They can distinguish reliable landmarks from unreliable landmarks, and may even, like bees, make use of “optic flow” – the visual phenomenon in which the scenery around us flows past us at a rate that depends both on how fast we’re going and how far away the scenery is from us. And recent studies indicate they may also orient by using the earth’s magnetic field. Their talents reveal an extraordinary awareness of the environment around them — a form of perception that is far different from our own. These ants are just one of the many animal navigators that Barrie explores in his new book, Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way.
The author Henry Beston famously wrote that animals are “not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” In his book, Supernavigators, Barrie, a former British Diplomat, travels around the globe and through scientific literature, both historic and contemporary, to learn about the extraordinary and still mysterious navigational powers of animals. He meets with the scientists who study the wayfinding skills of birds, butterflies, and more. He returns from these other nations to human society as a special envoy, skillfully describing the stunning array of navigational intelligences of other species — often exceeding our wildest imaginations — and issues a call to better respect and celebrate these animals’ abilities in an era where human behavior is increasingly impeding them.
Barrie is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and has sailed all over the world and made many long voyages. After serving in the British Diplomatic Service, Barrie worked in the arts and as a law-reform campaigner. His award-winning first book, Sextant, told the story of one of the most important human navigational instruments ever created.
Recommendations:
Souvenirs Entomologiques (“Entomological Memories”) by Jean-Henri Fabre
The Moths of the British Isles by Richard South (two volume series)
Selected Writings by John Ruskin
The Thin Red Line directed by Terrence Malick
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