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Special Molecule Gives Birds a Magnetic Biocompass
Aaron Rowe writes "CORDIS news reports that a team of scientists has identified a family of molecules called cryptochromes that allow migratory birds to sense magnetic fields. Curiously enough, these molecules only function when accompanied by blue light. The article also mentions, 'The researchers also suggest that, as cryptochromes have been strongly conserved throughout evolution, all biological organisms could have the ability to detect magnetic fields, even if they do not use them.'"
Where do I sign up to get these powers enabled? I totally would go for it, even if it is a really lame 6th or 7th sense. Like, if I was lost in the woods with no cell phone and nothing to make a shadow with, and no running water... it could be mildly useful!
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
When he gets off the plane at DIA, his first question is which way to north. Once he has his berings, he always knows his directions. Even when traveling through the mountains, day or night, he is able to figure out the direction quickly. Pretty impressive. What I find interesting is that plane travels screws him up. Once on the ground, If he does not get his bearing quickl, he appears to get more uncomfortable as time passes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And since radio is just a modulated electromagnetic signal, we should be able to pick up Rock 'n Roll on our teeth by exposing them to blue LEDs. It remains only to train our brains to understand this new sixth sense...
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Where he was reading Brief History of Time and read "light is effected by gravity", to which he concluded that it was easier to drop things in the dark.
-1 offtopic.
Mind you, maybe I could strap a blue LED to an albatross and find my way home when I'm drunk.
+1 ontopic.
Task Mangler
I hope they don't get too confused:
1 5/1544240g _South_
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/
http://digg.com/general_sciences/North_Pole_Movin
No wonder those latent genes are turned off.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I'm way ahead of you.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
This is interesting in the sense that these are very low frequency (~0Hz) fields which transfer much less power to the molecule which interacts with it than say visible light which operates at a much higher frequency and is comprised of a coupled electric and magnetic field. Of course the latter has been known to be sensed by sighted animals for quite some time. One way to view this is as an extension of the mechanism of vision- a photon causes a fast (actually one of the fastest reactions known) trans->cis conformational shift in retinol which drives a voltage down the optic nerve... the mechanism described in the FTA is the next step: once a radical is formed, it responds in a magnetic field. Apparently this response is also sensed. Interesting finding!
I will dispute their statement about pigeons though. I recall watching or reading something where the scientists put trackers on homing pigeons to discover how they found their way around. Turns out they follow landmarks.
The pigeons often took indirect routes, because they were following a road. The scientists didn't figure this out even after they realized the paths were very odd... it didn't click until someone looked at a road map.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Anecdotally, I have heard of many people "sensing" the magnetic field of an MRI scanner. I have had a few MRI's done on myself, and can attest to this feeling. It is strange, mostly in the head, somewhat like when one feels dizzy or just a tinge of seasickness. I think that is has something to do with the fact that as you enter the scanner, the field you experience changes quite rapidly. Once you are in the scanner, I haven't really noticed the queasiness as much, though it still feels strange. However, I attribute this second sensation more to the fact that one is contained inside a small tube with all kinds of weird noises and vibrations going around. So at the very least, some people seem to be sensitive to changing fields above some threshold.
Oh get over it already. All of you have been running around like a little girl with a skinned knee for 5 damned years. Suck it up.
This comes bundled with Human Condtion V1.0. For $19.99 you can upgrade to Navigation Power User.... or you can wait for MS Vista.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
They mention the blue light necessity of this system, but they never really explain why it has to be blue light or what the light itself does (unless I've become illiterate). Can anyone explain (or at least make something plausible up) the whole blue light component of this mechanism?
Blue light? This is possibly a stupid question, but isn't sunlight yellow?
Yes, but skylight is blue.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I've know for a long time that many large birds freak out when a red laser pointer is shown anywhere near them. Especially large parrots. I'm not talking about pointing in their eyes, which is cruel to any animal. But just shining the red light nearby is enough to agitate them, and if shown near their head they will lose balance and fall from their tree.
These light sensitive molecules must be very important to the bird's balance as well as helping them migrate. I wonder if they use the magnetic field to remain upright as well, or if by the red light turning off the receptor magnetic-sensitive light receptor molecules, they temporarily go blind. REd light could be perceived to be much brighter to them than the other colors. Since if the red light shuts off the receptors, only a small amount must be blinding. It might be like flipping a light switch where all blue and green perception disappears and only red is left. I"m glad my eye's aren't affected by specific colors that way.
I think you've just hit upon a new theory as to why the dinosaurs went extinct. Is there any evidence, for or against? How well are the dinosaur extinction event and the magnetic pole flips narrowed down, and could the dinosaur extinction be a delayed reaction?
Well, the thing is, magnetic pole reversals actually happen pretty often, according to Wikipedia at a rate of 1-5 events every million years. Since the dinosaurs lived 65-230 million years ago, by looking at this graph we can deduce that during their existence they experienced a few dozen pole reversals.
Now that I look at it though, it is somewhat interesting that the Cretaceous Long Normal, an abnormally long (~40 million year) period during which there were no pole reversals at all, ended around 15 million years before the dinosaurs disappeared. I personally think it's just a coincidence, though.
I suspect you may be referring to magnetite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetite/
in which case ferromagnetism is by an iron-containing molecule. In the present case the operative molecule is a radical which is not necessarily related to iron. Further, the magnetic response which occurs in the FTA results from the photon-based activation of cryptochromes in the retina, implying an eye-coupled and thus almost 'seeing' type response to magnetic fields. I would speculate the effect slightly changes the dynamics of the cryptochromic response such that magnetic orientation slightly changes the appearance (e.g. perhaps sensititivity to colors) of objects from the perspective of the bird. It's fun to think about.
I recall ~10 years ago at the exploratorium in San Fransisco an interesting exhibit whereby magnetic-sensitive bacteria were confined under a microscope which also held a movable magnet. When viewed through the eyepiece, the bacteria were observed to follow the magnetic field (all collect at one of the poles of the imposed field). When the magnet was moved by the observer, all the bacteria would move accordingly over an approx. 1 minute response time. This is an example of biological sensing by magnetite. Many species are also reported to contain a region of high-concentration magnetite and some scientists speculate this may be a sort of 'magnetic field sensor'.
As far as I know, the mechanism of magnetic sensing the TFA is only newly discovered.
Yes you can. Just remove the cryptochromes and see if they can find their way. I'm sure we could just sew them back on afterward.
It's a very badly written press release. In fact the actual science has zilch to do with birds and everything to do with plants using the same molecule. They described the way light and magnetic fields interact to change the way the plant stem grows, except in plants without the cryptochrome molecule.
Which is just basic, everyday scientific advancement: a very small and excruciatingly dull thing, presented with a tie-in to something more interesting in an attempt to look sexier and get funding. Scientists hate doing it, but if you want to keep doing science, that's what you do.
This article IS news, but only in the narrowest sense: new information. But after you take that new information, tie it in to something more interesting but only indirectly related (which you put at the front of the press release, and the actual new stuff at the end), then summarize it for Slashdot (skipping the stuff at the end), "news" becomes "olds".
One final note: when I call the work "small", I don't mean to dis the grad students who worked thousands of hours tending the plants, measuring them, putting that data into the computer, analyzing that data, probably cutting them open and measuring that... such immense grunt work for a minor advance [promptly blown up into something irrelevant by university's press department] is the heavy-lifting of science. It's gotta be done but it's not glamorous or even interesting.
Is it because we have learned how to use magnetics for navigation, so we therefore assume that animals capable of sensing magnetic fields must use it for navigation as well? The problem is that this is a false assumption.
--Birds can sense magnetic information. However, when the olfactory nerve is cut, they get lost even when the trigeminal nerve remains intact. Birds which have had the trigeminal nerve cut but which had the olfactory nerve left intact could find their way home. So the claim is that being able to sense magentic fields was not required for homing pigeons.
Still, it is generally accepted that homing pigeions have the wetwork required to sense magnetic fields. And if not used for navigation, then what? Why did such a sense develop?
Put another way, what other perceptive planes of information exist which might make being able to sense EM fields useful?
ALL organisms might have this ability?
Chi-wiz.
-FL
Ok, anyone who refers a movie as horrible as "The Core" for physics demonstrations deserves to be shot.
I mean, come on, unobtainium???
According to a recent New Scientist article, homing pigeons use their nose to find home rather than the Earth's magnetic field.
From the article:
Any brief event that requires fifteen million years to exert an extinction is probably not the cause of said extinction. In fact, it's not even a coincidence as a coincidence requires concurrence in time.
We should be training these birds for credit card validation...
One quack good/accepted, two quacks bad/rejected.
Definately better than those stupid card swipe machines!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I appear to have a similar talent, but mine only manifests when I am driving another nail into the wall.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
No way, that stuff messes up your brain! Math just... okay, math messes up your brain too.