How do birds navigate when they migrate to one place and go back to where they came from again? This has been one of the many long-standing mysteries in science.
For forty years, scientists have known that birds can somehow sense the magnetic field and navigate by it. But they’ve been unable to figure out how, until now. Two teams have recently identified that birds can actually visualize the magnetosphere.
The prevailing theory when it came to bird navigation was that the cells in a bird’s beak, which are rich in iron, were what helps it in navigation. In the late 1960s, however, a new theory from Klaus Schulten from the University of Illinois emerged. According to Schulten, “migratory animals, including birds, must contain a certain molecule in their eyes or brains that responds to the magnetic field.”
Ever since then, there has been a great amount of evidence that supports Schulten’s theory. And now, two teams — one from the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, and the other from Lund University — may have made Schulten’s theory the prevailing one.
The Swedish study was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, while the German one was published in Current Biology. Both studies focus on a class of proteins known as cryptochromes.
More information about these studies over at Big Think.
(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)