Imagine you are a young Bar-tailed Godwit, a large, leggy shorebird with a long, probing bill hatched on the tundra of Alaska. As the days become shorter and the icy winter looms, you feel the urge to embark on one of the most impressive migrations on Earth: a nonstop transequatorial flight lasting at least seven days and nights across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand 12,000 kilometers away. It’s do or die. Every year tens of thousands of Bar-tailed Godwits complete this journey successfully.
In their first autumn, young birds follow inherited instructions such as “fly southwest for three weeks and then south-southeast for two weeks.” If they make a mistake or are blown off course, they are generally unable to recover because they do not yet have a functioning map that would tell them where they are. This is one of the reasons why only 30 percent of small songbirds survive their first migrations to their wintering grounds and back again.
To appreciate why radical pairs are so special, we need to talk about a quantum-mechanical property of the electron known as spin angular momentum, or “spin” for short. Spin is a vector with a direction as well as a magnitude, and it is often represented by an arrow, ↑ or ↓, for example. Particles with spin have magnetic moments, which is to say they behave like microscopic magnets.
Schulten’s hypothesis also predicts that there must be sensory molecules in the retina in which magnetically sensitive radical pairs can be created using the wavelengths birds need for their compass to operate, which another line of research had identified as light centered in the blue region of the spectrum. In 2000 he suggested that the necessary photochemistry could take place in a then recently discovered protein called cryptochrome.
We had to wait almost a decade before we could make similar measurements on a cryptochrome from a migratory bird. The first challenge was to decide which of the six bird cryptochromes to look at. We chose cryptochrome-4a , partly because it binds FAD much more strongly than do some of its siblings, and if there is no FAD in the protein, there will be no radical pairs and no magnetic sensitivity.
Open Questions Although these experiments confirm that Cry4a has some of the properties required of a magnetoreceptor, we are still a long way from proving how migratory birds perceive Earth’s magnetic field lines. One crucial next step is to determine whether radical pairs actually form in the eyes of migratory birds.
DanRather Simply amazing!
sachikoko Thanks for sharing this
DanRather That's silly to this Potawa...shrug
How does a washed up news guy stay on tv?
DanRather
Scientific American will bend the science to fit the culture. Too woke to be logical. Sad times for everyone.
douglasbing Wow
RWMann
ablnk Magnetic. in the eyes. Whaaaat?
DanRather Even Snowbirds?
Птицы используют не компасы и не дихроичное квантование в глазах. Птицы используют лимфатическую систему.
Look like a giant space crab
laurahelmuth You may say humanity's doomed but look what the dinosaurs left behind
impermanen_
DanRather I’ve always thought birds were amazing. I see them build intricate nests with just their two feet and beak. I watch ‘parents’ herd their flocks of babies through the grasses. I love seeing them bathe in the water. Then off to travel south in fall.
DanRather Amazing!
DanRather There must be a MAGA joke in there somewhere… 🤭
Yet they still fly into windows.
DanRather This is not news to anyone who studies navigation in migratory birds and other avians. Apparently it’s super-exciting “news” to a self-discredited and disgraced former t.v. anchor. 🙄
DanRather Reminds me of The Core.
This is why I believe in a Creator. So many fascinating attributes in a plethora of species!
DanRather Interesting. So what does it mean when I see flocks of geese flying north for the winter instead of south ?
DanRather So … what we want to know is why they choose some field in Canada and not the bar district in Vancouver BC. I mean, the former might be more scenic, but the party is where it’s at! Honk on!!
Joyhenderson78
DanRather
DanRather This is so fascinating!!
Its nice to see that this has become more main stream. I brought this up in a cell biology class on signal transduction and he thought I was an idiot.
DanRather Thank you Dan, for sharing this fascinating story. Sometimes, it is quite therapeutic to read something about the joy and wonder of life, to counter all the bad news we can get consumed by, in trying to cope with and push back on. It’s like a refreshing drink of water.
DanRather The things you learn on Twitter.
DanRather And we just have GPS
DanRather Amazing!! Never thought about it!!
Fascinating!
And mammals sense danger so they migrate for survival even though is illegal these days.
Then they said: Evolution is the answer!
Ions sensing a magnetic field are totally classical.
thats also how animals see colors
It´s just fascinating, as fascinating are many other behaviours of animals whose origins were unkown until their explanation surprised us and made us marvel at the wonders of the Nature.
Earth is not a planet for one thing, so there is that and neither birds nor people need a magnet to know which way north is, so this is patented B.S.
Wow- I would like to see the proof as to how that was scientifically proven. Quantum? Hmmmm
this makes sense because i guess we have ways to detect photons?
Happy Migrating Day!
Did not know that, thanks!!!😎
Another guess 😼
Birder_Katie Fascinating article!
Further evidence that birdsarentreal
So, they couldn't find out why, then just said it's because quantum effects?
Is this based on bio-photonics? I recently read some science on that. An interesting subject.
OMFG, science is amazing.
So they see magnetism? How do they sense these quantum effects in the molecules of their eye?
They eyes?! It’s bad enough that they also see ultra violet.
I knew it!
Nature is amazing
Ah, okay, that makes perfect sense.
I knew that. 😂 Not. Wow!
I read this entire article looking for evidence of a 'quantum' mechanism and didn't see it. Ugh.
New? Hints? Hardly.
Very interesting read on quantum biology in migratory birds, including highlights of Prof. Soloy’yov’s who leads the QuantbioG team. Congratulations Ilia! Great to read about you and Klaus in this article.
❤️
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: RollingStone - 🏆 483. / 51 Read more »
Source: WNYC - 🏆 602. / 51 Read more »
Source: ladailynews - 🏆 332. / 59 Read more »
Source: CBSNewYork - 🏆 268. / 63 Read more »
Source: ABC7NY - 🏆 592. / 51 Read more »
Source: NYAmNews - 🏆 269. / 63 Read more »