|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Rupert: In terms of human migration, these islands are now the limit of the westward migration of Europeans, having gone right across North America, subjugating the natives and trying to eliminate their culture, the whole process has moved here. We can see it happening before our very eyes, and in evolutionary terms it's the opposite of everything we've been talking about so far. Now there's no separation of the islands from the TV networks and other cultural forces of America. Terence: One of the most frightening trends I think in modern culture is the wish to build shopping malls everywhere. There is a mentality that would like to turn the entire planet into an international airport arrival concourse. That's someone's idea of Utopia. Ralph: There appears to be a double gradient here with the eastward migration of Asian people balancing the westward migration of European people, and this is actually the interface where the double gradient can produce an increase in novelty and new mutations, and a forward leap perhaps, of human evolution, could begin here. Terence: A standing wave forming here as forces move both east and west. Rupert: So can we point to any human creativity in Hawaii which exemplifies the cultural equivalent of the Malaysian Archepelego? Or is it more like a stalemate with roughly half of the island's population coming from the East and half with the West, with the native Hawaiians trapped in between? Terence: Well, a Pacific Rim culture is hypothesized to be emerging, and Hawaii is central to all of that. It's equidistant from Sydney, Lima, Tokyo, and Vancouver. Rupert: Have they adopted the slogan, "Hawaii, the Pacific Hub" ? Terence: If they haven't, I'm sure they're not far behind. The presence of the world's largest telescopes here make it a center of world science, at least in astronomy. I think the world's first, second and third largest telescopes are on this island, with an identical twin of the largest being built 200 yards away from it. Rupert: So it's a centre for linking humanity with the stars. Terence: We're looking out from the top of Hawaii, chosen paradoxically for being the darkest place on earth. Ralph: From here they'll see the next wave of ducks' feet departing for Biosphere II. [* This trialogue was recorded prior to the 1996 discovery of fossil life in a meteor of Martian origin.] FOUR Homing Pigeons Rupert: In my book, Seven Experiments That Could Change The World,1 I focus on areas of research that have been neglected by orthodox institutional science because they don't fit into its present view of the world. As we have already discussed (Chapter 1), this research can be done on very low budgets. The experiment I propose with homing pigeons is one of the most expensive in the book, but even so need cost no more than about $600. In spite of over a century of research, we really haven't a clue how homing pigeons find their way home. You can take a homing pigeon 500 miles from its loft and release it, and it will be home that evening if it's a good racing bird. Pigeon racing enthusiasts do this regularly. The birds are taken away from the homes in baskets on trains or on lorries. Then the baskets are opened, the pigeons circle around and fly home. It's a very competitive sport. Pigeon fanciers win cups and cash prizes, and good racing birds can sell for as much as $5,000. Pigeon homing is a phenomenon that everyone agrees is real. Moreover, many other species of birds and animals can home, including dogs and cats, and even cows. But no one knows how they do it. Charles Darwin was one of the first to put forward a theory. He proposed that they do it by remembering all the twists and turns of the outward journey. This theory was tested by putting pigeons in rotating drums, and driving them in sealed vehicles by devious routes to the point of release. They flew straight home. They could even do this if they were anesthetized for the duration of the journey. The birds could still fly straight home. So these experiments eliminate theory number one. Another theory is that they do it by smell. This is not intrinsically very plausible, since, for example, pigeons released in Spain can home to their loft in England downwind from the point of release. There is no way the smells could blow from its loft in England, to Spain, against the wind, but the birds get home. Experimenters have blocked up pigeons' nostrils with wax, and they get home. They've severed their olfactory nerves, poor birds; they still get home. They've anesthetized their nasal mucosa with xylocaine or other local anesthetics, and they get home just the same. So smell cannot explain their homing abilities. The next theory is that they do it by the sun, somehow calculating latitude and longitude from the sun's position. To do this they would need a very accurate internal clock. Well, pigeons can home on cloudy days, and they can also be trained to home at night. They don't have to see the sun, or even the stars. If they can see the sun, then they use it as a kind of rough compass, but it is not necessary for homing. You can shift their time sense by switching on lights early in the morning, and covering their loft before sunset. For example you can shift their sense of time by six hours. Now if you take such birds away from home and release them on a sunny day, they set off roughly 90 degrees from the homeward direction, using the sun as a compass. However, after a few miles they realize they're going the wrong way. They change course and go home. Then there is the landmark theory. The use of landmarks is inherently unfeasible, because if you release the birds hundreds of miles from where they've been before, landmarks can't possibly explain their finding their home, although they undoubtedly use landmarks when they're close to home, in familiar territory. In any case, this theory has been tested to destruction, by equipping the pigeons with frosted glass contact lenses, which mean they can't see anything at all, more than a few feet away. Pigeons with frosted glass contact lenses can't fly normally, and indeed many refuse to fly at all. Those that will fly do so in a rather awkward way. Nevertheless, such birds can be released up to 100 miles [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
Odnośniki
|