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CONVERSATION LESSON

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Dan: So yeah, apparently, they commute from the suburbs to the city. The city is where they could get, you know, it’s easier for them to get food from the tourists, but it’s not as safe. So that’s a wild story that apparently is true. I hope it’s true.

Aaron: Yeah. Well, even if it’s not true, I think it’s really interesting.

Dan: Yeah. Never let truth get in the way of a good story.

Aaron: That’s right. Good stories are good.

Dan: But apparently, that is true. But of course more natural homing instincts exist all throughout the animal kingdom.

Aaron: Sure, I think the most famous is probably homing pigeons. They’re even called “homing” pigeons.

Dan: I was actually listening to this really interesting interview about homing pigeons and the story from World War II. There was, the British, apparently towards the end of the war, they took over this German town and the Americans were set to bomb it. The Americans were 20 miles away and they were set to bomb the town in a matter of hours, and so it’s full of British soldiers now. There was no time to get the message back to the base but they had brought homing pigeons with them. These homing pigeons, they were in a box, so it wasn’t like they were tracking where they were. They were able to traverse this pretty far distance with the message tied to their legs and, “Let it be known to the American forces, don’t bomb this town. We’ve taken it.”

So there’s lots of stories of homing pigeons and lots of research into why this is. One of the things is they think that maybe it’s smell. Maybe they’re tracking like making a map of smells. Okay, there’s the smell of the ocean coming from the south, or there’s this smell of olive groves coming from the northeast and then tracking this as they go along. Maybe that place apart but they’ve done some research showing that even when these pigeons are in smell-proof boxes, they still were able to make their way home.

Aaron: Interesting. And I’m sure that pigeons, like many animals, probably use some of the same devices that humans use such as the topography of the land. They may use certain landmarks that they can see. One thing about pigeons that I read, homing pigeons, is that some scientists suspect that they have some kind of sound. That they have like a sound map. That they navigate through sounds that we can’t hear. They’re outside of our range of hearing. But they create like a soundscape and the pigeons can find their way based on sound. The reason that they have this theory is, those same pigeons, if they take them to certain places, they can’t navigate. They get confused and they can’t find their way home. And I don’t know why that is but it had something to do with the sounds of that area which is interesting.

Dan: I was actually reading about certain Bermuda Triangles for pigeons where they’re not able to navigate. I wonder if that has something to do with sound or if it has something to do with the magnetism on that certain area.

Aaron: That’s right. I think that’s another. I think monarch butterflies are able to navigate the Earth’s magnetic field in some way, too, because they have really far migration patterns like thousands and thousands of miles. Apparently, they’re able to go to the exact place every year, every migration period based on the Earth’s magnetic field.

Dan: How cool would that be if you’d be able to feel? I mean, apparently pigeons have some sort of magnetic capability in their beaks. I was reading a couple of years ago about biohackers – people who try to modify their bodies to develop different senses that we don’t naturally have. One device was this belt that you wear around your waist and it has maybe 16 different pods that can vibrate.

The section of your belt that is facing north is always vibrating. So you have this kinesthetic, this physical sensation of where north is.

Aaron: That’s wild! Yeah, that’s wild. Of course, I mean you can also use the sun, but if it’s a cloudy day or the stars at night, but again clouds can obscure that. But to have a physical sensation of where direction is…

Dan: And wherever you are on the planet, you would actually have a feeling that my home is that way, like over my right shoulder, a little bit to the left. Another thing that I’ve seen biohackers do that I don’t think it helps them navigate, but they’ve embedded magnets into their fingertips so that they can feel magnetic waves. People talk about they can actually feel electronics through a buzzing kind of feeling.

Aaron: That’d be sort of scary if you had a really nice computer that had a lot of information on it.

Some guy comes along and say wants to touch your computer or move it for you. You got to watch out for those guys.

Dan: Yeah, like a super villain. Super villain skill. I wonder if one day we’ll find some way to hack our biology to navigate magnetically like birds. Apparently, this ability to navigate magnetically, it’s not about just feeling that this way is north and this way is south, they’re actually feeling like a magnetic topography.

Aaron: Yeah. Like a fingerprint, almost, that they can hone in on certain places that have meaning to them like the place they were born. Salmon do that. I don’t know if it’s really through the earth’s magnetic field, but that’s another species of animal that’s well-known for its migration. They’re born in a river, a freshwater stream, and they spend years out at sea. And somehow they make it back to the exact same place where they were born, and they spawn and they die. But that’s amazing! If you think about how wide and far the Earth is for those species. It’s just incredible.

Dan: I don’t know that there’s any other theory that could explain how both birds and creatures that live under the ocean… So back to this idea of navigating magnetically, what I think is interesting is I always thought it just means you have an internal compass and you know this way is north, this way is south, this way is east or this way is west. But really, it must be something much more complicated and much more fine and granular. Because can you imagine if you were just left out in the middle of the ocean with a compass? What would you do? That would be meaningless to you.

Aaron: Yeah, you’d know north, south, east and west, but so what? Where are you going to go?

Dan: Clearly, their maps go much beyond just the directions.

Aaron: That reminds me of those stories that everyone’s heard of I’m sure about dogs who have been left in some unknown location to them and after a number of weeks or months they find their way right back to the home of their owner. That makes you wonder, too, how on earth has that taken place? Furthermore, there’s a particular story, again I think this happened in World War II, about a soldier, an English soldier who went to fight in France during World War II. And somehow his dog made it, found its way across the English Channel and into France, and amidst all the bombing and the shelling that was going on, it hunted its owner down and found it.

Dan: Hold it! He made his way from France to England?

Aaron: No, from England to France.

Dan: England to France. Oh, that’s way easier. Yeah I didn’t know that. That’s nothing.

Aaron: Yeah, right, he’s going south. But the fact that he found his owner, how is that possible? It sort of makes you realize maybe there’s more than just navigating the magnetic fields. There’s got to be some kind of connection.

Dan: Power of love.

Aaron: The power of love. It could be. Who knows? Or maybe a psychic connection somehow.

Dan: Sure. There’s been studies about animals that can sense when their owner is coming home. I think we actually did a lesson on that one. So yeah, maybe they’re able to sense their owners across distances.

Aaron: And the cats as well, there’s a story of a cat. The family was on vacation. They lost the cat.

They couldn’t find it and they had to go back home. A couple of months later, the cat shows up. It’s of course starving and bleeding from the paws and it’s in really bad shape but it was definitely their cat. And some people asked them, “Hey, how do you know that’s your cat? It could be another cat.

Maybe it’s just a stray cat” But no, they knew because apparently they had had a chip put in the cat to find it.

Dan: How far did this cat…?

Aaron: I don’t know how far it was. I don’t have the details. I just heard about that.

Dan: I’ve got a friend. Did you ever know Perry who used to live in town?

Aaron: No.

Dan: Perry, he’s got the story about losing his dog and then his family moving across the country.

He said that he was like hitchhiking across the states and he just saw his dog one day. Like on the side of the road. I don’t know… Somehow, but then the dog ran off again but when he returned home, the dog found the new home. But I don’t know. He had a lot of tall tales, so that story isn’t so reliable. But there’s lots of stories about animals finding their way back home. What do you think about your hamsters? You think they can find their way home?

Aaron: I don’t have hamsters, Dan. I know you want me to have hamsters. You keep saying that, but actually I have guinea pigs.

Dan: It’s pretty much the same thing.

Aaron: No, it’s a little different. Don’t tell that to a guinea pig.

Dan: I studied that. I studied guinea pigs; biology class. It’s pretty much the same family. It’s the same family, right?

Aaron: It is the same family. Yeah, the rodent. The rodent family.

Dan: Enough said.

Aaron: Anyway, they like their home. They stay home and they don’t even like coming out of their cubby holes. They’re not up for traveling. Anyway, back to the homing skills of animals. We’re animals, too. I think some people are really good at navigating and finding their way and others just seem to be missing that part of the brain that allows them to know where they are. One example is my wife. She, more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life, she really has a lot of trouble navigating. She gets lost so easily and she just doesn’t seem to know right from left, from north to south, and it’s really difficult for her.

Dan: Is she able to say “this way is north” in a grid city like Kyoto?

Aaron: No, absolutely not. No. It’s really hard for her.

Dan: Have you ever tried to teach her? Like, okay, this area where we live is in the north, and downtown is in the south.

Aaron: Well, yeah, because I’m the opposite. I tend to always know where north, south, east and west is. Even when I go travel abroad to a city, I just take a look at a map and somehow I can remember it and I tend to know where I am just based on that, looking at the map before I go.

Dan: I’ve traveled with you and I can see you have a way better sense of direction, when you go underground in a subway, are you consciously trying to track, ‘Okay, the way I came was towards the back, that’s the south..

Aaron: I don’t really have to make a point to do it. I just do it sort of in the background. And I can tap into it if I want to. I’ve known lots of people that can do this and interestingly, they’re usually male and I don’t know why that is. People I’ve met who have the best sense of direction tend to be males and I don’t know why.

Dan: Back to your wife, do you think she just doesn’t pay attention? Or do you think she actually… Aaron: No, she just doesn’t have that ability. I mean every person has areas that their ability is weak and that just happens to be one of the weak ones.

Dan: You know, Folake. You probably remember Folake.

Aaron: Yeah, I remember her.

Dan: I tried to teach her just the basic directions. Because it’s so easy in the city we live in because we’re ringed by mountains on three sides so I would say, “Okay, the side without mountains, that’s south.” If you can remember that’s south then it’s easy to, based on that, you can judge where they are.

Aaron: But of course that’s a huge generalization. Maybe the best navigators in the world happen to be women, I don’t know.

Dan: But you’re making an implication that…

Aaron: Maybe there is an evolutionary reason for it. I don’t know.

Dan: Okay, well we’ve heard the theories. What is the theory?

Aaron: Well, there’s one theory that way back before civilization when we were hunters and gatherers as communities trying to survive that the men tended to travel long distances in search of game and hunting game. They would have to follow the migration of game and they would need to find their way back home to bring the meat back home to the women and children. Perhaps, after thousands upon thousands of years doing that, that men developed better homing devices than women did.

Dan: But in prehistories, I think people were nomadic so we’re on the move. It’s not like they were settled in towns or homes. So if they were moving around, that would be the counterpoint. Another counterpoint would be that in some cultures, maybe women take on a more of a gathering sort of… Aaron: So they would have to roam around in search of berries, fruits Dan: So they would have to track, this is the area with these groves. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s a smaller distance to travel.

Aaron: No, it’s really interesting.

Dan: I understand that you think in past life, you were a gatherer.

Aaron: I have no idea. Sometimes I feel like a gatherer now. I’m, always gathering stories.

Dan: Gathering nuts and berries.

Aaron: Gathering stories to share with others.

Dan: What else did we want to talk about?

Aaron: I don’t know. What did you want to talk about?

Dan: Oh I remember the one thing I wanted to talk about.

Aaron: What’s that?

Dan: This tribe in Australia that doesn’t have words for left and right. And because of that, they use the directions, cardinal directions, north, south, east and west for everything.

Aaron: Oh really?

Dan: So they might say, “Could you pass me that cup?”

Aaron: On the south of the table or something?

Dan: Not just on the south. They would say, “On the southeast, middle direction.” Aaron: Oh wow, really?

Dan: Or, “Where’s your coat?” “It’s in the northwest.”

Aaron: Oh wow, how about that?

Dan: Because of that, because they don’t have left and right, they constantly know where they are without having to think about it.

Aaron: Oh I see. It’s just sort of built in to their whole world view.

Dan: Yeah. It’s even how they say, “How are you?” It’s, “Where are you?” Then by saying your location, I guess you’re saying, “I’m good.”

Aaron: This is an aboriginal tribe of Australia?

Dan: Yeah, somewhere in Australia. I was listening to this interview with this researcher and they would say, “How are you?” and she’d be like, “Uhm, I don’t know.” They just thought she was really dumb. And she started to get it slowly it’s not even a matter of just saying I’m northwest. It’s so fine, there are 80 different directions that they have.

Aaron: Whoa! Are you kidding me? 80?

Dan: And they can immediately call it out what part of those 80 cardinal directions they are.

Aaron: Interesting.

Dan: But she said after living with them over time, she started to get it. Then one day, she, all of a sudden, realized how she was walking outside, she had kind of this certain part of her brain that was throwing up a mental map of where she was in relation to her home.

Aaron: Wow. And I would imagine when she interacts with a standard Western kind of culture, when the directions are as simple as just left, right, north, east, south and west, she must think we’re really handicapped.

Dan: Yeah, it must seem so vague and cloudy.

Aaron: Yeah. It’s like, “How do these people live? How do they get around? It’s too simple.” Dan: So when you hear about a culture like, it makes you think maybe we do have some amazing abilities to navigate. It just hasn’t been ingrained into us through our culture.

Aaron: Either that or our attention, it just never surfaces because we’re so busy with our iPhones and computers and jobs and lives and families, that we’re not sensitive to it somehow. I don’t know.

Dan: Sometimes when you meet somebody who has no sense of direction, you just get a feeling that they’re just not paying attention.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: No, maybe that’s just you, man. I sort of get the feeling that they’re in a different space.

They’re just different.

Dan: Yeah. Well that’s a nice way of saying it. It’s a nice way of saying you’re spaced out. You’re in a different space.

Aaron: You’re in a different space. Your perception of reality is different, that’s all.

Dan: Well, I think we might have reached our end.

Aaron: Okay. Well, are you going to be able to find your way home tonight?

Dan: I hope so. I’ve got a compass on my iPhone and I think I’ll be okay.

Aaron: Well I have Google Maps so that will save me if I get lost.