Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: Richard_B on 13/06/2008 14:13:31
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Richard_B asked the Naked Scientists:
Hi naked people.
I just listened to a podcast in which it mentioned how clever birds are and how scientists have proposed how birds can see the earth's magnetic field due to a certain molecule in their eye and use this to navigate their way across thousands of miles.
As the earth's magnetic field follows a north/south direction, would birds only be able to navigate using them if they are travelling north or south, e.g. following the 'lines' that run from north to south?
Can birds use the earth's magnetic field if travelling across the field lines, i.e. east to west. Surely all they would see would be a series of lines going across their path and disappearing off to the horizon to their left and right and this would give them no clue as to what to head for.
Great work on the podcasts (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/) - amazing how you can explain the most complex science questions in such easy to understand language.
Thanks,
Richard Brown
Norwich
What do you think?
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Whether birds can 'see' magnetic fields, or whether the magnetic fields affect another organ is, I think, still debatable. Either way though, they probably rely upon the Dip angle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_angle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_angle)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_circle)