HISTORY-DEPENDENT DISSIPATION AS A NECESSARY MECHANISM FOR PERSISTENT DIRECTIONAL BEHAVIOR

This theory proposes that persistent homing and migratory behavior in animals arises from a purely local, physical control mechanism rather than from non-physical representations such as maps, goals, or destinations. It identifies history-dependent, anisotropic dissipation acting through local energy–momentum exchange as a necessary mechanism that converts immediate sensory deviations from a calibrated baseline into sustained directional bias. Directional movement is thus the forced consequence of continuous error minimization in a dissipative system, not guidance toward a future location. The claim is strictly one of necessity and mechanism: wherever persistent directional behavior occurs under locality, this mechanism cannot be absent, without asserting sufficiency or predictive completeness.