DISCUSSION: The author reviews what we know about homing pigeons’ navigation systems, and tentatively concludes that they use a mental map.
___________
- We don’t know this. There might be other species that can also find their way home.
- CORRECT. This is the author’s tentative conclusion. The first explanation is unlikely, and there is some inconclusive evidence for a map sense.
- The author never said that the experiments were flawed. We only know that they were incomplete.
For example, take the experiment that attached a magnetic field to birds. That successfully proved that birds don’t use magnetic fields alone. It was a well designed experiment.
But we need another experiment to confirm that birds don’t use magnetic sense in combination with an orientation ability.
- The author never said how we should identify the mechanism homing pigeons use. He just reviewed the existing evidence.
- The author only mentioned that honeybees have a short range system (lines 9-11). We don’t know if other species have such a system.
And the author thinks that homing pigeons don’t use such an outward displacement system.
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