Bird's-Eye View May Include Magnetic Fields

BoredStiff writes "Heard on NPR and reported in ScienceDaily: a study finding that migratory birds may be able to 'see' magnetic fields. The report comes from a current study by a research group from Oldenburg, Germany. They found that migratory birds use their visual system to perceive the reference compass direction of the geomagnetic field: 'Sensory systems process their particular stimuli along specific brain circuits. Thus, the identification of what sensory system is active during magnetic compass orientation, provides a way to recognize the sensory quality utilized during that specific behavior.'"

Comments

Re:So what happens if the magnetic field changes?

[alan_dershowitz]

It's theorized that birds use the the setting sun to "calibrate" their magnetic direction sense. Scientists have done experiments with visual cues and artificial magnetic fields. What's new here is that these scientists have found direct evidence that the magnetic field is "seen" as opposed to some other sense method (for this type of bird anyway.) Check out this link: geomagnetism and birds migration

Re:Does this mean birds aren't doomed after all?

[wizardforce]

the implication (to me) is that if there are fossils embedded in rocks with the polarity reversed then the two were simultaneous, and that some mechanism other than sight was used for sensing the fields.

these flips happen every 100,000-200,000 years or so which is virtually nothing on the geological scale, species can survive for millions of years so there's a fair chance they could start dying out around the time of a flip, that doesn't really mean that the field was causing an extinction unless there is some pretty convincing evidence to go along with it. this can be tested and I would bet they already have tried this, but we could expose the birds to a magnetic field and vary it according to what we think flips are like and see what happens.

How does a migrator bird know when to eat ?

[o'reor]

There are older articles about this. For example, it's very important for a bird to pack up energy before crossing seas or deserts during their migration. But how do they guess when it's time for them to eat ? That's when their magnetic sense comes in handy :

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_18_160/ai_80344966 Well, imagine the applications that this might have on poultry farming : apply the correct magnetic field over the coop and your ducks or hens start overfeeding uncontrollably...