Incredible Journeys: Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year 2019

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Animals even have the ability to detect subtle variations on the intensity, inclination, and declination of the earth’s geomagnetic field through the presence of light-stimulated molecules that can detect their orientation in relation to earth’s magnetic field. Incredible journeys is not focused on humans, but instead examines the range of different methods used to measure position and correct. Magnetic sensitivity, the capacity to perceive polarised light (and from it calculate the angle of the sun to the earth), acute sense of smell and prodigious location memory abound in nature, and Barrie explains every one.

This might be the most educational popular science book I've read, and it doesn't get caught up in the common pitfalls of euphemisms, too many metaphors or simplifying fascinating themes. Humans are visual creatures and Barrie describes how both humans in the past and indigenous people today still rely on the sun and stars for navigation. In closing the book, Barrie remarks that during its writing, he was struck dumb time and again by the extraordinary skills animals show while navigating.His final chapter laments the atrophy of humanity’s navigational skills due to our reliance on technology. I enjoyed a World War Two story highlighting the importance of navigation and also some interesting facts about the Aborigines, Inuit and Polynesian navigators. As Supernavigators makes clear, a stunning array of species command senses and skills—and arguably, types of intelligence—beyond our own.

Now I understand that those bugs and birds are the "supernavigators", but honestly, at some point it got incredibly boring to hear about ants again. Thank you, David Barrie, for taking us along on these riveting voyages by sail and wing, hoof and flipper. Still found it quite hard to get through at times because the stories are quite short and you are introduced to a new species or new type of navigation many times. He tells stories of the scientists that pursue this field- their motivations, persistence and ingenuity. Immensely entertaining… [Barrie] is an admirably reliable and assiduous guide to what we do and don’t yet know.Or the ant’s in-built mental odometer which allows it to count steps (see my review of Desert Navigator: The Journey of an Ant), the importance of smell in fish, or spiny lobsters trudging along the sea bottom in a straight line for hundreds of kilometers? The chapters are short and each one has an "epilogue" which is usually interesting, sometimes pithy, or just provides something to think about.