56 Beck, The Occult Senses in Birds. [^ 



developed imagination cannot even vaguely visualize the subtle 

 processes by which they operate. 



In bird life one of these occult senses, the homing sense, exists to 

 a remarkable degree. The complex phenomena of migration, often 

 over trackless regions, the homing acts of pigeons, and the speedy 

 returns over unfamiliar sea courses of Sooty Terns taken a thousand 

 miles from their nests, cannot adequately be explained on the basis 

 of acuteness of vision or persistence of memory in the birds that 

 make these wonderful nights. There apparently is something 

 entirely apart from human consciousness or subconsciousness that 

 holds the bird to a true course between widely separated points. 



The homing sense is broadly, though somewhat selectively, dis- 

 tributed among animals. It is exhibited by many insects and by 

 some mammals. It only finds its greatest development in birds. 



Nor is there anything supernatural about this seemingly occult 

 faculty. It probably is only a common trait of animal life strongly 

 carried through in certain groups. A highly efficient homing sense 

 is but an example — like the keeled sternum in birds or the mind in 

 man — of a well established principle of progressive evolution. The 

 inordinate development in selected species of organ or sense com- 

 mon to many is a course so regular in nature that it cannot be con- 

 sidered an irregularity. 



Akin to this homing sense and operating in a way equally intangi- 

 ble to man there exists, in all probability, a food finding sense. 

 Widely distributed and occasionally highly specialized within 

 several lower groups, notably the insecta, the food finding sense has 

 persisted in only a limited way among vertebrates. There is little 

 evidence that it exists among mammals. It is somewhat broadly a 

 part of bird life ; and among birds it seems to be most highly devel- 

 oped in the carrion feeders. 



In many species of birds doubtless only an adjunct to activity 

 in ranging or acuteness of vision, the food finding sense — at least on 

 the basis of strong presumptive evidence — is so highly developed 

 in certain individuals among these carrion feeders that it can act 

 independently of the known senses. 



Many of the writer's observations on food finding in Turkey 

 Vultures have been insufficiently explained by the common theory 

 that these birds are directed to their food by the senses of sight or 



