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It's very surprising to me that as late as 1822 Europeans had no idea where migratory birds went. I would have expected that this would have been determined ba
by Sniffnoy 6y ago
It's very surprising to me that as late as 1822 Europeans had no idea where migratory birds went. I would have expected that this would have been determined back during the age of exploration, once they gained access to these places. Why did this not happen?
- angrais 6y agoI suspect it's because scientists were not on the ships and the purpose of voyages was not aimed at a scientific discovery in this regard? For example, imagine Barry just sailed to Canada from England and observed a bird ... "Hi Bob, doesn't that bird look similar to the ones back home?" "Sure does. Glad they've got them here too!"
- Sniffnoy 6y agoI don't think this is a sufficient explanation; there were a number of scientific voyages of explanation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_and_American_voyages_of_scientific_exploration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_and_American_voyages_..., although most of those postdate 1822. Still, there were a number before then. Even without explicitly scientific voyages, the Americas -- north and south -- had been settled by Europeans for hundreds of years, and the US was now an independent country, and settlement of Australia had been underway for decades. That leaves plenty of discovery to be done on land. Like, Carl Linnaeus had died some 40 years earlier. His taxonomy included New World species, and so did other taxonomies made by other later 18th-century biologists. Meanwhile James Cook had taken various scientists on a number of his voyages (which were primarily intended for exploration), resulting in among other things the discovery of a number of new plant species. So, I don't think this is an accurate description of the state of affairs at the time.