Estimated Read Time: 6 minutes
The Original GPS
Remember when we used maps to find our way? So cute, right? That’s what the animal kingdom thinks about our new fandangled GPS.
First, a bit of history.
Sputnik was the world’s first satellite. Launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union, it signalled the escalation of the Cold War’s arms race.
As is so often the case with war, Sputnik – or, rather, the fear of being left behind – caused the Americans to engage in the game of one-upsmanship.
So, in 1963, some enterprising defense scientist proposed an ambitious idea to have satellites help navigate us – or, in this case, weapons – to pinpoint locations. It was the birth of GPS.
I’ll speed up the story to the early 2000s where GPS technology stopped being just a military toy and started to become accurately available to people like you and me (long story: the US military got cute, made public GPS inaccurate and then decided to stop hoarding the technology…let’s carry on, shall we?).
Fast forward to today and most shudder at the thought that our parents once had stacks of paper maps, folded and ripped and drawn all over, to get them to where they needed to go. All we need is a phone, speak to some automated voice and bingo: you have step-by-step directions.
Cool, right?
Not really.
You see, animals have been using their own GPS technology, sans war and satellites, since the dawn of life. And it’s evolved far further than what we mere humans have designed.
Sure, animals don’t have smart phones, but they don’t need them. For many, their built-in compasses are beyond anything that we find in our advanced brains – and maybe even our phones.
Satellite
goes down?
Battery dies?
Maybe that old school map looks a bit better.
For a bird travelling thousands of kilometres from one pinpoint location to another, guess what? Bad weather and bad luck isn’t coming into play; that bird isn’t getting lost – it can find its way home even from places its never been before.
Scientists remain divided and perplexed over how animals seem to have this travel thing down. But recent studies suggest that while, sure, some use sights and smells – and even stars, weather, sound and gravity – the real exactness of some migration patterns comes down to an animal’s built-in map of the world, designed in a grid system using the magnetic field.
Confused?
As we know, the Earth’s poles define our magnetic field and for at least some species (and possibly many) the sensitivity to this magnetic field (their ability to sense the field’s intensity and measure it against magnetic inclination or declination…which, before this becomes a math lesson, is basically what we call north and south, east and west) allows them to know how and where to travel each migration; how and where to go if they become lost.
And it’s not that crazy. The magnetic field is actually a tool that helps satellite’s relay our GPS coordinates to our smart phones. It’s just that even if we think we know what technology animals are using, we still don’t really understand the mechanism behind it. Which is crazy.
Yet, twice a year, whether we understand it or not, amphibians like toads, frogs and salamanders will move from one pond to another to mate and know exactly where they’re going.
Okay. That’s not super impressive.
Kind of impressive are ungulates, like caribou, who take their cues from weather and food availability to travel across valleys – across multiple valleys – to seasonably better, if not greener, pastures that they learned about once as a youngster and then never forgot which on/off ramp they must take at what time from the animal trail highway.
Take this Rufous hummingbird.
As the smallest birds in the world to migrate, hummingbirds don’t have a flock to journey with. They’re solo travellers, which makes it all the more remarkable that they also have one of the longest treks of any species on the planet. Some travel 12,000 kilometres each year on a clockwise route, beating their tiny little wings more that 50 times a second to reach Mount Robson each June. Not only do they remember the same breeding locations year-after-year, but they also remember their way to same flowers year-after-year. Remarkable, especially when you consider they’re about seven centimetres long. That means, according to All About Birds, the Rufous travels the equivalent of 78,470,000 body lengths just one way each year – considerably more than the world’s longest migrator, the Arctic Tern, who travels further by distance, but it ‘only’ equates to 51,430,000 body lengths.
Though hummingbirds might be the most impressive migrators, many other birds are pretty cool too.
These Canada Geese for example. Having not been made lazy by manicured lawns and free bread hand-outs, they return to the same nest on the Fraser River each year. Awkwardly, it’s right next to the osprey nest, who also return to the same nest every year – and then try to remember to eat fish and not goslings each spring.
Snow geese – who are overtaking the world and destroying their own summer grazing land in the tundra because we’ve removed forests, created farmland and launched war on their predators (coyotes) in what was once a dicey, but now cushy, wintering lair – know to take a break from their 4000 kilometre journey for a drink of water and a nice sunset at Moose Lake each spring and fall. I mean, wouldn’t you?
Tundra swans do the same. Trumpeter swans love the weather and the food so much they stay for a while and have a few babies while they’re at it. No invasive mute swans in Mount Robson to ruin the vibe!
The list goes on.
Each migrator plays a critical role in this ecosystem and in all ecosystems. They pollinate, transport seeds, keep the gene pool of immobile creatures healthy, regulate prey and even become seasonal prey for certain predators themselves.
Without animal migration, diversity decreases, systems lose critical workers and the overall health of the landscape declines – both environmentally and economically. Just like with human migration.
Which brings me back to the original GPS.
Even when we’re on the brink of losing a critical, migrating keystone species – as was the case with North America’s tallest bird, the whooping crane, in the mid 20th Century, when numbers plummeted to just 21 individuals – that built-in GPS is critical. People dressed as whooping cranes and using small, white planes to act as stand-in parents were able to teach captive-raised young to migrate like their ancestors of old. Told once, many were then able to find their own way.
