← all shorts

Person

Gustav Kramer

A man wearing glasses and a suit stands behind a circular metal structure resembling an orientation cage, symbolizing Gustav Kramer's invention used to study bird migration.

German ornithologist (1910–1959) who in the 1940s and 1950s invented the orientation cage — a circular enclosure that records the direction a caged migrating bird tries to hop. His work first demonstrated that captive birds retain a directional preference tied to migration season, opening the field of experimental bird navigation. He died young in a fall while climbing to a wild pigeon nest in Italy.

Mentioned in 1 article