NEW YORK — A surprising gut feeling may help pigeons find their way home. <\/p>\n
Animals use various techniques to navigate<\/a> including following the stars<\/a> and remembering key landmarks. Birds, fish and turtles orient themselves using Earth’s magnetic field as a compass<\/a>. But it’s not yet clear how exactly they do this.<\/p>\n Pigeons are a well-known group of frequent flyers that can traverse hundreds of miles (hundreds of kilometers) in a single day. For thousands of years, humans have used them to carry news, notes and military messages.<\/p>\n Scientists have long tried to untangle how pigeons travel without getting lost. Some think the birds detect magnetic cues using light-sensitive molecules in their eyes, while others suggest it happens in the beak or inner ear. <\/p>\n \u201cThe magnetic sense has been this mystery for almost 100 years,\u201d said Martin Wikelski with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.<\/p>\n In a new study, Wikelski and other researchers decided to draw back the curtain on pigeons’ navigational secrets. They searched for magnetic clues in the birds’ organs and found a strong signal in an unexpected place: the liver.<\/p>\n Specialized immune cells in the pigeon’s liver break down red blood cells and store iron. When scientists temporarily stripped pigeons of those immune cells and let them fly, the birds \u201cjust couldn’t find their way,\u201d said Christian Kurts with the University of Bonn in Germany. That suggested the iron-rich liver cells might play a role in their sense of direction. <\/p>\n The birds’ magnetic compasses only got scrambled on overcast days. That’s because they also use the sun as a navigational guide. <\/p>\n Scientists have previously wondered whether immune cells could be involved in magnetic sensing, but the new study published Thursday in the journal Science is the first to present a full-fledged theory. <\/p>\n \u201cI would never have guessed it, but once it was explained to me, it makes sense,\u201d said behavioral ecologist Albert Kao with the University of Massachusetts Boston, who had no role in the study.<\/p>\n The immune cells are located near nerve fibers in the liver. That might be how they transmit their \u201cmagnetic sense\u201d to the brain \u201cand help the pigeons to navigate,\u201d said study co-author Clivia Lisowski with the University of Bonn.<\/p>\n The researchers think other birds and animals like mice could operate using a similar magnetic GPS. But outside experts say more work is needed to verify the pigeons navigate this way and to firm up how these signals get to the brain. While the researchers found the strongest magnetic signal in the pigeons’ livers, such immune cells have also been spotted in other areas including the beak and spleen.<\/p>\n It’s possible this magnetic puzzle doesn’t have a single answer, wrote veterinary pathologist Simon Spiro and biologist Hal Drakesmith in an accompanying editorial. The birds could use different techniques to sense magnetic fields depending on the task, be it traveling long distances or finding a specific destination. <\/p>\n \u201cIndeed, it could be prudent to have more than one way of getting home in the dark,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n \u2014-<\/p>\n The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — A surprising gut feeling may help pigeons find their way home. 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