{"id":326373,"date":"2025-12-01T16:57:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/pigeons-rely-on-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-navigate-now-researchers-may-have-uncovered-how-they-do-it\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:57:12","slug":"pigeons-rely-on-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-navigate-now-researchers-may-have-uncovered-how-they-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=326373","title":{"rendered":"Pigeons Rely on the Earth\u2019s Magnetic Field to Navigate. Now, Researchers May Have Uncovered How They Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The vestibular system, a set of structures in the inner ears that helps with balance, may grant the birds their special ability<\/h2>\n
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Sara Hashemi<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pigeons can sense magnetic fields via their inner ears, new research suggests.
\n Alan D. Wilson via Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica<\/span>
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In the late 1800s, the French naturalist Camille Viguier proposed an idea that would be dismissed and forgotten for more than a century. He speculated that birds and other animals could navigate with the help of the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, and that their magnetic sense originates in the inner ear.<\/p>\n

Since then, research has shown that animals including\u00a0bats<\/a>,\u00a0turtles<\/a> and\u00a0migratory birds<\/a>\u00a0really do pick up on the planet\u2019s magnetic field\u2014a sense called magnetoreception. But the mechanisms behind that magnetic detection have remained mysterious.<\/p>\n

Now, a new study supports the second part of Viguier\u2019s hypothesis. Brain mapping and genetic analysis suggest that pigeons\u2019 inner ears are indeed the organs that help the creatures sense magnetic currents, according to a paper published in the journal\u00a0Science<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on November 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably the clearest demonstration of the neural pathways responsible for magnetic processing in any animal,\u201d Eric Warrant<\/a>, a sensory biologist at Lund University in Sweden who was not involved in the study, tells Davide Castelvecchi at\u00a0Nature<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers have mainly hypothesized that birds\u2019 magnetoreception works in one of two ways: either light-sensitive proteins in their eyes respond to magnetic fields, or tiny minerals in their beaks work like little compass needles, per Nature<\/em>. But over a decade ago, a study<\/a> suggested that magnetic fields set off a pigeon\u2019s vestibular system, a set of structures deep in the ears that helps animals balance and orient themselves.<\/p>\n

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Need to know: The vestibular system<\/h4>\n

The vestibular system<\/a> contains three looped tubes that are perpendicular to one another. They\u2019re all filled with fluid, and cells in these tubes help the brain understand movement in the x, y and z directions of 3-D space.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To follow up on that work, researchers put 13 pigeons, one by one, in a device that created a rotating magnetic field for a little over an hour. Then, the team traced which nerve cells in the birds\u2019 brains were activated using genetic markers of cell activity. Comparing the brains of birds exposed to a spinning magnetic field to those that weren\u2019t hinted that the vestibular system played a vital role. (The experiment was repeated in the dark, which ruled out the light-sensitive protein hypothesis.)<\/p>\n

The technique \u201callowed us to identify specialized circuits that process magnetic information,\u201d David Keays<\/a>, a study co-author and neuroscientist at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, says in a\u00a0statement<\/a>. \u201cMoreover, it provided a critical clue to the location of the primary magnetic sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keays and his colleagues then dissected three pigeons to take a closer look at their hair cells. These cells with hair-like filaments are located in the fluid-filled inner ear, and they detect motion and convert it into electrical signals that the brain can interpret. The pigeons\u2019 hair cells, the team found, contained high levels of proteins known to be sensitive to electromagnetic changes.<\/p>\n

The study is \u201ca technical tour de force,\u201d Warrant tells Erik Stokstad at\u00a0Science<\/em><\/a>. Still, he\u2019d like to know what properties of the Earth\u2019s magnetic field can be sensed by the pigeons\u2019 vestibular systems, such as identifying north and south via the field\u2019s shape, which some animals can do. \u201cThis is all super exciting for a sensory physiologist,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Ulrich M\u00fcller<\/a>, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study, tells\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0that while the study is \u201ccompelling,\u201d additional genetic studies are needed to validate the results. For instance, he says, turning off the gene sequence that codes for the newly identified magnetoreception protein could reveal whether it\u2019s truly responsible for the sense.<\/p>\n

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