The Homing Instinct: Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration [Kindle Edition] Author: Bernd Heinrich | Language: English | ISBN:
B00E78IC9W | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has returned every year since boyhood to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. What is the biology in humans of this deep-in-the-bones pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing?
Heinrich explores the fascinating science chipping away at the mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures, from fish to insects to amphibians, to pinpoint their home if they are displaced from it; and how the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. Most movingly, Heinrich chronicles the spring return of a pair of sandhill cranes to their home pond in the Alaska tundra. With his trademark “marvelous, mind-altering” prose (Los Angeles Times), he portrays the unmistakable signs of deep psychological emotion in the newly arrived birds—and reminds us that to discount our own emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself.
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- File Size: 16437 KB
- Print Length: 368 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 8, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E78IC9W
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,778 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Has Bernd Heinrich ever written a bad book? Not to my knowledge. From his first, groundbreaking, study of temperature control in bumblebees, Bumblebee Economics his studies of raven behavior (Ravens in Winter, 1991; Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, 2007) on why solitary birds share their food with other solitary birds, to his lovely autobiography cum biography of his father, The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey through a Century of Biology (2007), everything he writes has been enriched by his blend of scientific rigor and poetic description. (The books I haven’t read show how wide-ranging his biological interests run: he’s written on how animals prepare to die, running and evolution, the trees in his woods, the wildlife year round in his Maine woods, bird nesting and “the invention of monogamy”, geese, an owl, and insect physiology and behavior in general.
Now he tackles homing: animal migration, nesting and nest-building, and in the process, talks about his own ‘home’, which is more the forest surrounding his cabin in Maine than the house itself. He is generous in recognizing and commenting on other scientists. The results of their work, in lab and in the wild, permit him to generalize beyond his own experience, which he relates lovingly. It is the combination of the analytical with the loving and accepting observer of animal ways that makes Heinrich such a good guide.
What is "home"? How and why are animals drawn toward it? That's the topic of Bernd Heinrich's new book. Thanks to the title and to the dust jacket illustration, we initially think here of the act of migration, and especially of the most noticeable ones: of large groups of birds flying overhead in the spring and the fall. But Heinrich gives us additional examples of homing in species of insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals; from his own observations and from the research of others. The animals may be led by instinct, sight, or a combination of reading the landscape and responding to magnetic earth forces. The choice depends on species, location, and opportunity. It's interesting stuff. The topic of homing is a much richer one than it may appear at first thought.
Then: What comes after the creature finds its best territory? Home building and home maintenance, of course. And we learn more fascinating details about the kind of structures that animals create, if they feel the need to build them. Now Heinrich turns his sights toward humans. (And we knew that he would get to this eventually, after we read the Preface.) We follow him to Maine, to his own most familiar places. Here he gives us further fodder for consideration, especially in debating why humans developed into home-builders at all. I wish he had reached this connection a bit sooner, though. And he doesn't quite resolve the personal conflict that he references in the Preface. Still, I do appreciate his final, environmentally savvy, conclusion.
Animal lovers should be forewarned or reminded that Bernd Heinrich IS a scientist. He "collects" animals for study, hunts for deer, and has no qualms about sacrificing bumble bees to orb spider webs.
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