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From: rowe@pender (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Question about Pigeons
Summary: Yes, pigeons are sensitive to earth strength magnetic fields
Message-ID: <21714@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 90 15:05:09 GMT
References: <2316@syma.sussex.ac.uk> <25794@ut-emx.UUCP> <16.25fcf350@desire.wright.edu> <8435@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
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Reply-To: rowe@pender (Mickey Rowe)
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In article <8435@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> g2g@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Ranjan Muttiah) writes:
>
>	Are pigeons sensitive to the earth's magnetic fields ?




Yes.  If you want to look into it, see work by James L. Gould from
Princeton University.  There was also an article in _Natural History_
last fall (October '89 ?--I can look it up if there's interest) that
discussed the various mechanisms that pigeons use for navigation.
There is actually a vast literature about animals that appear to have
sensitivity to earth-strength magnetic fields, but to date there is no
complete picture of a transduction mechanism in any of them (unless
you include the passive orienting system used by some bacteria).

For a detailed and thorough (though probably not quite up to date)
overview of the area, see _Magnetite Biomineralization and
Magnetoreception in Organisms   A New Biomagnetism_, Plenum Press,
1985, J.L. Kirschvink, D.S. Jones, and B.J. McFadden, eds.

Mickey Rowe      (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)