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Communication, social cognition, and the ability to solve problems are generally considered hallmarks of animal intelligence. The seemingly routine navigational behavior of birds, reflected in their ability to return to remote goal locations even when displaced to distant, unfamiliar places, seems to suggest a similarly remarkable ability. Why, then, is navigation only rarely discussed together with more traditional examples of intelligence? Two factors have nurtured this neglect: navigation can be understood as a purely computational process through which a simple algorithm can lead to goal-directed behavior, and there is uncertainty about whether the underlying neural organization of navigation has the same quality of a freely associating, distributed network, which would characterize mammalian prefrontal cortex and possibly the avian nidopallium. However, the experimental demonstration that the hippocampus is central for homing pigeons to carry out memory-based, corrective reorientation following a navigational error, and the occurrence of hippocampal path cells, which display prospective-like response properties suggesting their participation in representing future navigational outcomes, combine to show that at least hippocampal-dependent aspects of navigation rise to the level of traditional examples of animal intelligence.

This chapter takes an ethological perspective and describes the advantages and disadvantages that having a cognitive map would confer upon an animal. It also explores a range of instances of navigation in order to arrive at an understanding of what it is that animals in the real world appear able to do. It then evaluates a number of the extant models of navigation and the evidence for and against each of them. The data shows that most of the homing pigeon data have been more helpful for understanding compass use, than the possibilities of cognitive mapping or even of landmark use. In this review of cognitive mapping, it concentrates on the two outcomes of the possession of such a map that are considered the most valuable to a navigating animal: planning and shortcutting. It is concluded that a reasonable jury must still be undecided on the question of whether map use can be ruled in or out. Complex spatial behaviour may involve a map, but equally, it may arise from the flexible and opportunistic use of other, simpler kinds of stimuli and behaviours.

One of the joys of science is its steady production of wonderful discoveries. At irregular but not intolerable intervals, it throws out to the waiting world findings that add spice to a thousand morning newspapers and enliven the conversations of countless barbers and taxi drivers. Some branches of science are especially fruitful in their production of wonders: physics doles out an inexhaustible supply of elemental particles with clever, memorable names like quark. Medicine provides powerful antibiotics freshly isolated from weird sources such as exotic muds and frogskin, arraying them against an equally fresh crop of antibiotic-resistant microbes. Geology reveals previously unsuspected earthquake faults under major cities and dazzles us with hidden, underwater chains of volcanoes in secret, violent eruption. Even paleontology can be counted on for the latest, well-documented theory of how birds came to fly or, as I have already discussed, why the dinosaurs became extinct. And then, every ten years or so, like the return of a speeded-up Halley’s Comet, animal behavior brightens the scientific horizon with a new and incredible explanation of how animals find their way home. Not long ago, the wires were humming, or would have hummed if wires hummed anymore, with the discovery by P. Berthold and three colleagues that bird migration has a rapidly evolving genetic basis. Evidently, the inherited tendency of a population to choose a particular migratory direction can change in a few years, with the selection of another direction. Berthold, working in Radolfzell, in southwest Germany, made the most of an earlier observation: since the 1950s, increasing numbers of blackcaps, Old World warblers, have been spending the winter in Britain, traveling from their breeding grounds in Germany and Austriaduring the fall migration. Traditional wintering grounds are in the western Mediterranean countries far to the south; most blackcaps still go there in the fall. But the blackcaps wintering in Britain have done well; global warming (or chance) has ameliorated the winter climate, and the British are dedicated bird feeders. What Berthold did was to capture forty male and female blackcaps in England, transport them to Germany, breed them, and raise their young.