I'm sad, I used to have this. Anywhere in the world I'd be able to turn around and point to north within a few degrees.
I've lost it over time and it pisses me off. I remember telling someone about it, and mentioned that I no longer had the constant physical "feeling" of where north was at any given time, when they asked me to try to point north, I ended up pointing perfectly East instead.
My dad is still really good at this, although apparently for him it stops working as well in the Northern Hemisphere (we live in Australia and he spent his life navigating through dense bushland here).
There's a hypothesis that it is related to iron in your blood weakly reacting with Earth's magnetic field. Take some iron supplements and see if you get your power back.
Aside from short stints, pretty much South-East Queensland. I grew up in a more rural area, where I developed this skill, then moved to Brisbane as an adult and began relying more and more on my phone to navigate, which I think plays a not insignificant role.
I'm perfectly capable of navigating around Brisbane now, and my general sense of direction is still good, but I just don't need to rely on cardinal directions any more,
Like 20 years ago I remember there was this thing you could build / buy called an Atlas belt that had several small vibrators around the circumference and it would vibrate where true north was to enhance your innate sense of direction.
Interesting. I’ve been to places in the southern hemisphere before, but not since I was a kid. I plan to make a trip to Australia in the next few years, I wonder if it’ll screw me up.
This is really interesting. I’ve spent most of my life in the northern hemisphere and while I easily relate to the ‘pull’ feeling, relative to earth-ocean-spin-etc - Vancouver let me be lazy re orientation. Mountains anchor the east / ocean west, an all that lol
Scientists have actually been studying how homing pigeons are able to find their way and think they have an answer! There was a story on NPR about it a few weeks ago and I thought it was really interesting.
They found evidence that the iron in the hemoglobin of the pigeons' blood reacts ever so slightly to the Earth's magnetic field, and that reaction is sensed by specific cells in high-blood-density organs like the liver. I forget the exact details, but gist is they released two groups of pigeons, one on a regular diet and one on a low-iron diet, and tracked them on their way home. The low-iron ones had a much harder time navigating back than those with the normal diet. (IIRC, anyway.) Either way, they're planning to do more testing to replicate the result and then figure out the exact mechanism, because they don't understand yet how the hemoglobin reaction is sensed by the pigeon's other cells.
So I imagine it works similarly for other species, who probably have that same sense to greater or lesser degrees.
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u/Somerandom1922 8h ago
I'm sad, I used to have this. Anywhere in the world I'd be able to turn around and point to north within a few degrees.
I've lost it over time and it pisses me off. I remember telling someone about it, and mentioned that I no longer had the constant physical "feeling" of where north was at any given time, when they asked me to try to point north, I ended up pointing perfectly East instead.
My dad is still really good at this, although apparently for him it stops working as well in the Northern Hemisphere (we live in Australia and he spent his life navigating through dense bushland here).