Natures wonders: bird brain magnetic field sensing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 26, 2023, 00:55 (337 days ago) @ David Turell

A specific brain area:

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-bird-brains-flick-earth-magnetic.html

"A new study from researchers at Western's Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR), home to the world's first hypobaric climatic wind tunnel for bird flight, explores a brain region called cluster N that migratory birds use to perceive Earth's magnetic field. The team has discovered the region is activated very flexibly, meaning these birds have an ability to process, or ignore, geomagnetic information, just as you may attend to music when you are interested or tune it out when you are not.

***

"Specifically, the research team led by psychology Ph.D. candidate Madeleine Brodbeck and AFAR co-director Scott MacDougall-Shackleton studied white-throated sparrows and found they were able to activate cluster N at night when they were motivated to migrate (to avoid prey and fly during cooler periods) and make it go dormant when they were resting at a stopover site.

***

"'This brain region is super important for activating the geomagnetic compass, especially for songbirds when they migrate at night," said Brodbeck. "Almost all previous work on this specific brain function was done at one lab in Europe, so it was great to replicate it in a North American bird like the white-throated sparrow."

"Earth's magnetic field, likely first investigated and identified by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in the 1830s, has long fascinated physicists, aerospace engineers.

***

"'Magnetic fields are really fun to think about because they're invisible to humans. We can't see them or sense them, but most animals perceive them in some way," said Brodbeck. "For birds, using Earth's magnetic field to know if they're going towards a pole or towards the equator is obviously really helpful for orientation and migration. It's incredible that they can activate their brain in this way, and we can't."

***

"'Birds don't just use their magnetic compass. We know they pay attention to the sun and the stars as cues too. And we also know that things like lights at night, or windows in buildings, and all these things that we put in the world disrupt their migrations," said MacDougall-Shackleton. "This type of basic research informs us and lets us know the full suite of ways that animals perceive the world when they're migrating and what we as humans need to do to minimize our impact.'"

Comment: any attribute of a physical facility of the Earth's environment is used by the evolutionary process to add in survival. lAl migrating animals use the magnetic field.