Embark on a fascinating journey into the world of avian navigation. Discover how birds, equipped with nature's most sophisticated compasses, traverse vast distances, guided by invisible magnetic maps. Uncover the possibility of some species possessing a global magnetic map.
The remarkable navigational precision displayed by these tiny birds has been one of the enduring mysteries of behavioral biology
Now, a new study has found that this remarkable ability involves a “magnetic map” that works like our human system of coordinates.
- Some birds could possess a “global GPS system” that can tell them how to get home from anywhere on Earth.
Winging It
Other birds, including seabirds and homing pigeons, have been shown to require olfactory cues
- At this stage, we don’t understand the reason behind these different preferences
- It still remains something of a mystery as to how they sense the magnetic field
Mind maps
It has been suggested that different parameters of the Earth’s magnetic field could form a grid, which birds follow, of north-south and east-west lines
- This would mean that birds essentially navigate using a system similar to our Cartesian coordinates – the basis of modern GPS navigation
- To date, there has been no clear evidence that birds can use the magnetic field in this way
Untrue north
To prove the coordinates theory, they used a technique called “virtual displacement”
- They placed birds in a cage called an “Emlen funnel” and changed the nature of the magnetic field in the immediate vicinity of the bird
- In doing so, they created a virtual displacement
- This tricked the birds into thinking they were in a different magnetic location, allowing them to fly in the “wrong” direction in the real world, but not the “right” direction
