Sensing Longitude Amongst Migratory Birds

Migratory songbirds solved the longitude problem long before humans came down from the trees, yet we are only beginning to understand how birds deal with this incredibly difficult problem

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Eurasian reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus). (Credit: Nikita Chernetsov et al., doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.07.024)

Although we rarely think about it now, the greatest scientific challenge of the 17th and 18th centuries was longitude — determining one’s east-west location — and this conundrum was particularly pervasive when traveling across vast oceanic expanses.

The most common way to deal with “the longitude problem” was to sail along the coast to the latitude that passed through a ship’s eventual goal, then sail along that line of latitude until reaching the intended destination. Hopefully. This strategy, known as “westing” (or “easting” when traveling east), significantly lengthened oceanic voyages by days or weeks, leading to poor nutrition, scurvy and other health issues, or starvation for crew members, and increased risks to the vessel itself.

But westing was not fool-proof — and it was dangerous. After a number of spectacular shipwrecks, the British, French and Spanish governments independently established prizes, each worth millions of…