rowe@pender (Mickey Rowe) (03/14/90)
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)