• The Homing Instinct

  • Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration
  • By: Bernd Heinrich
  • Narrated by: Rick Adamson
  • Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)

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The Homing Instinct  By  cover art

The Homing Instinct

By: Bernd Heinrich
Narrated by: Rick Adamson
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Publisher's summary

Acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has returned every year since boyhood to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. What is the biology in humans of this deep-in-the-bones pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing?

Heinrich explores the fascinating science chipping away at the mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures, from fish to insects to amphibians, to pinpoint their home if they are displaced from it; and how the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. Most movingly, Heinrich chronicles the spring return of a pair of sandhill cranes to their home pond in the Alaska tundra. With his trademark “marvelous, mind-altering” prose (Los Angeles Times), he portrays the unmistakable signs of deep psychological emotion in the newly arrived birds - and reminds us that to discount our own emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself.

©2020 Bernd Heinrich (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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