Pingie: HTTP:: Birds Apparently Use Light for Migration Guidance

HTTP:: Birds Apparently Use Light for Migration Guidance
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In a new scientific study that may improve conservation efforts for migratory birds, scientists demonstrate that, in European robins, a visual center in the brain and a special type of light-sensing cells in the eyes play a much more important part in guiding the bird on its migratory path than magnetic-sensing cells in the beak. The study appears in the October 29 issue of the respected scientific journal Nature, Wired reports. “This is really fascinating science,” University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) biophysicist Klaus Schultenof says. The expert has been among the first scientists ever to suggest that birds can sense a magnetic field. Other studies that have followed have discovered that the creatures may be orienting themselves in regards to the planet's magnetic lines, when moving from one location to the other. Regardless of the amount of work that has been poured in the investigations, scientists have never been able to determine precisely how bird!
s detect the magnetic fields. “This is basically the sixth sense of biology, but no one knows how it works. The magnetic sense is by far the least-understood sense in the natural world,” German expert Henrik Mouritsen, from the University of Oldenburg, says. He is also the co-author of the Nature paper. The exper...
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Birds-Apparently-Use-Light-for-Migration-Guidance-125603.shtml
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