AWARENESS OF DIRECTION 



involving recognition of landmarks. Such performance is not incompatible 

 with theories of homing based on terrestrial magnetism or Coriolis force. 

 According to these theories the stimuli for orientation at nearby points 

 would be too similar to those at the loft to be differentiated, but those 

 at a distance could be differentiated clearly." The distance effect is certainly 

 evidence of a type of "grid navigation," but it does not obtain without the 

 sun. The experiments of Kramer and Matthews are so amenable to quanti- 

 tative analysis and tie in so closely with observations of wild migratory 

 behavior that, in the face of present evidence, this distance effect favors 

 the case for sun navigation. The challenge now is for other workers with 

 other species in other places to repeat and test. 



In one of the few orientation experiments human beings have con- 

 ducted upon their own kind, Gregg (1939) found that a man will move in 

 the direction of his thoughts without being aware of doing so. His experi- 

 ments were set up very much like those of Kramer's with birds. Instead of 

 being caged, the human subjects sat within an enclosure encircled by cur- 

 tain. When a man, with motion-recording devices attached to his head or 

 to certain muscles, was instructed to think of "north" or "sunset" or some 

 other point of the compass, there was bodily motion or muscular activity 

 (of which the subject was unaware) in that direction. "To entertain a 

 thought of geographic location," concluded Gregg, "is to make overt or 

 covert response in the perceived direction." When Gregg's human subjects 

 were disoriented by being turned back and forth on their turn-table plat- 

 form—when they were "lost" within their curtained enclosure— they showed 

 no directional bias in their movements. Like Kramer's Starlings without the 

 sun, their actions showed a random pattern. 



We may step from Gregg's experiments into our daily lives to under- 

 stand how a man directs his actions with his whole being. Here I sit com- 

 fortably in the parlor reading, until hunger sensations impel me to walk 

 to the kitchen for a snack. Back to the easy chair for a while, then a yawn 

 or two and off I go to bed. These actions are conducted thoughtlessly, yet 

 precisely, so that I do not go to the bedroom when the stomach signals 

 hunger, nor to the kitchen or bathroom when I am tired. 



Such travel to kitchen and bedroom must be on a level of activity simi- 

 lar to that of a female duck with distended oviduct moving to her nest, 

 or of hungry stubble Mallards flighting out to the grain fields. For both 

 man and bird there is a pattern of appetitive behavior. For the man, the 



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