Show me the Way to Go Home

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gardening grandmother Ruth Brooks, also known as 'the snail lady', was chosen as the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year in 2010. She noticed that despite repeatedly throwing her snails over the garden fence, her gastropods would return home to decimate her petunias. From her Radio 4 experiments, designed by mentor Dr Dave Hodgson, from the University of Exeter, they showed that snails do have a homing instinct, returning from distances of over 10 metres.

In this documentary, Ruth sets out to investigate how different animals navigate, from smell maps for cats to astronomy for dung beetles. She travels to Portsmouth to meet some speedy pigeons and visits an MRI laboratory where neuroscientists are hunting for the source of their mysterious magnetic sense.

But do we humans have a homing instinct, and can we improve our sense of direction?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this
0:30.3	BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know.
0:34.4	My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds.
0:38.3	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely
0:46.0	engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:54.2	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories.
0:57.6	And that's just a few examples.
0:59.4	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
1:07.0	Choosing what to watch. Night after night. The flicking through. The endless searching is a nightmare.
1:14.0	We want to help you.
1:16.0	On our brand new podcast off the telly we share what we've been watching.
1:20.0	Cladie Aidea!
1:22.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
1:24.5	Lovely.
1:25.5	Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
	...

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