{"id":10757,"date":"2010-03-04T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/bird-beak-superpowers-measure-the-earths-magnetic-field-birds\/"},"modified":"2010-03-04T17:20:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T17:20:00","slug":"bird-beak-superpowers-measure-the-earths-magnetic-field-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/futurist\/bird-beak-superpowers-measure-the-earths-magnetic-field-birds.php","title":{"rendered":"Bird Beak Superpowers Measure the Earth’s Magnetic Field [Birds]"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, that's another one the birds have on us. In addition to flight and colorful plumage, they're also equipped with magnetometer beaks that can sense magnetic fields<\/a> and use them as a map. Yes, even chickens.<\/p>

Here's how it works. The upper beak of birds has nerve branches that contain iron, which may be used to measure the intensity and inclination of Earth's magnetic field<\/a>:<\/p>

More than about 500 dendrites in the periphery encode the magnetic field information, which is composed in the central nervous system to a magnetic map. It obviously does not matter, whether birds use this magnetic map for their long distance orientation or do not – the equipment can be found in migratory birds, like robin and garden warbler, and well as in domestic chicken. \"This finding is astonishing, as the birds studied have a different life styles and must fulfil diverse orientational tasks: Homing pigeons, trained to return from different release sites to their homeloft, short-distance migrants like robins, long-distance migratory birds like garden warblers and also extreme residents like domestic chicken\", explains Gerta Fleissner.<\/p><\/blockquote>

That's right: even Chicken Little has a built-in magnetometer. I get it, birds. You win. Me and my lame opposable thumbs are just gonna sulk off into the distance. But I'm not saying where, now that I know you'd be able to find me. [Eureka Alert<\/a> via Boing Boing<\/a>]<\/p>

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So, that's another one the birds have on us. In addition to flight and colorful plumage, they're also equipped with magnetometer beaks that can sense magnetic fields and use them as a map. Yes, even chickens.Here's how it works. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurist"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}