Lesson 4: Homing, Navigation, and Migration

Vocabulary

• Homing - ability of an animal to return to its home location after travelling away from it.

• Breeding site - a specific location where animals reproduce and raise their young

• Topographical Memory - the ability to find way, follow routes, and recognize familiar places

• Magnetic Navigation - a way to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field

• Celestial Navigation - a method of navigation using the sun, moon, and stars to determine position on Earth

• Migration - the regular, mass movement of organisms of the same species, usually on a seasonal basis and typically to a predetermined location.

• Behaviour - anything an animal does in response to an environmental stimulus

• Innate Behaviour - behaviours that are inherited and automatic responses, not learned

• Navigation - The process of using environmental cues to find a desired location or stay on a desired course

• Learned Behaviour - behaviours developed through practice, experimentation, or observation

• Territory - a defined area that contains an organism’s home base/nest and necessary resources that is defended from individuals of the same species

• Competition - an interaction between organisms to compete for limited resources

• Parental Care - any behavior that helps offspring survive and develop, even at a cost to the parent.

• Season - a time of year with unique weather, daylight, and nature changes.

• Cycle - a repeating series of events that returns to the starting point

• Environmental Conditions - external factors that affect how organisms grow, develop, and survive

• Environmental Cues - signals from the environment that influence how organisms develop and behave

• External Cues - signals from the environment that influence thoughts, feelings, or behaviors

• Internal Cues - signals from inside the body that help an organism respond to changes and stay balanced

• Seasonal Changes - the regular and predictable fluctuations in the environment that occur annually.

Homing

Homing is the ability of an animal to return to its home location after travelling away from it.

Animals travel away from a home location in order to find food or other resources, to find a mate at a breeding site and/or to return to a well resourced location.

Often, the time an animal spends away from it’s home location is short, therefore, many animals rely on visual cues to return to their home site.

In order to navigate, animals will use:

• topographical memory (visual cues), or

• magnetic navigation (using the Earth’s magnetic field), or

• celestial navigation (stars), or

• navigation by smell

Navigation

Navigation is the process of using environmental cues to find a desired location or stay on a desired course.

Accurate navigation is vital to ensure the safe arrival ‘home’ for animals that have been on both short and long journeys.

This is an innate behaviour - however, it can be refined by experience and learning.

Navigation makes use of a range of sensory receptors, allowing animals to respond to the environments stimuli and navigate across unfamiliar territories.

Territory

A territory is a defined area that contains an organism’s home base/nest and necessary resources that is defended from individuals of the same species.

Benefits:

• Better access to resources that aid survival.

• Reduced competition.

• Protected place for courtship, mating and parental care to young.

Costs:

• Requires energy to establish and maintain the boundaries with posturing, displaying, and fighting and the cost of getting injured while defending the territory.

Animals maintain their territory because the benefits outweigh the cost.

Migration

Migration is the regular, mass movement of organisms of the same species, usually on a seasonal basis and typically to a predetermined location.

It can be a cyclical event in which the migrants return to their origin, or it may be one-way, where the migrants die at the end of their migration.

Animals migrate for one or more of the following reasons:

• Food - to find food or essential nutrients

• Shelter - to find shelter, avoid harsh climates or to moult in a safe space

• Reproduction - to search for a mate, give birth, lay eggs, or raise their young in favourable environmental conditions

Knowing when to migrate

The most important consequence of migration is keeping individuals in favourable environments. 

Migration means that animals do not have to adapt to life in a single location as they can move repeatedly between habitats. 

Migratory behaviour is innate and genetically controlled. 

In most species, migration is initiated by the environment.