The homing instinct meaning & mystery in animal migration

Heinrich, Bernd 1940- (Author).

Summary: 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 humansof 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.

Record details

ISBN: 0547523637 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9780547523637 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 130652847X (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9781306528474 (electronic bk.)
Physical Description: electronic resource
remote
1 online resource (pages cm.)
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2014]