The prevailing view among behavioral biologists and ethologists of the 1950s was that the remarkable ability of migratory animals, especially birds, to return to the same breeding and wintering area year after year was based on innate mechanisms of orientation and navigation. Later this emphasis on hereditary control yielded to more dynamic conceptualizations of spatial-behavior mechanisms. The revised theory assigns a larger role to environmental influences and learning—experience-dependent change in behavior—in animal orientation and navigation.

Orientation

Orientation refers to a heading or directed movement that bears a specific spatial relationship to some environmental or proprioceptive reference. It is typically discussed metaphorically in terms of compass directions when the sun, stars, or the earth's magnetic field are used as orientation stimuli. Birds that migrate at night use all three of these environmental stimuli to orient their seasonal movements. Nocturnal migrants show...