Even the ants, bees and birds do it seemlessly.

Desert ants living in the featureless salt pans of Tunisia count their steps and erect tall entrances at their nests to find their way back home. Bees can navigate by their sense of smell, the sun's position, the pattern of polarized light in the sky, and vertical landmarks that stand out from scene, and possibly the Earth's magnetic field. They orientate themselves in relation to the dominant linear landscape elements, just like the first pilots. Honeybees use a ‘navigation memory’, a kind of mental map of the area that they know, to guide their search flights when they look for their hive starting in a new, unexplored area. Linear landscape elements, such as water channels, roads, and field edges, appear to be important components of this navigation memory.  Special cells in birds' eyes, may help them see magnetic fields. Birds can use both the beak magnetite and these eye sensors to travel long distances over areas that do not have many landmarks, such as the ocean.

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