The homing pigeon’s sense of direction comes from its blood

Man has utilized carrier pigeons for thousands of years. For example, in ancient Greece, birds flew the results of the Olympic Games to different cities. Even so, it is still not known exactly how the carrier pigeon always finds its way.

Of course, the bird uses the sun, landmarks and its good memory. But since it navigates flawlessly even in clouds, fog and darkness, it must also sense an invisible force that our bodies don’t know: the earth’s magnetic field.

That’s what the bird reads, but how?

It has been thought that the bird’s beak would have a kind of ferrous compass, or even that the light particles in the bird’s eye would dance on a quantum level so that it could actually see the magnetic field. No evidence of these has been found.

Now a new theory is presented in the cover story of Science magazine. The iron in the blood accumulates in the bird’s liver so densely that it reacts to the magnetic field. German researchers too testifythat this is the case.

Immunologist at the University of Bonn Christian Kurts recently lamented during a coffee break at a science conference how the iron in the spleens of laboratory mice messed with his sensitive magnetic instruments. Ornithologist at the Max Planck Institute Martin Wikelski happened to hear and realized that there could be an explanation for the homing pigeon’s sense of direction.

The research found that indeed, the pigeon’s liver contains millions of iron-rich white blood cells, and they are magnetic.

Researchers took 34 birds, half of which destroyed these white cells temporarily. Then they were set to orientate. All the birds found their way there in clear weather, but when the sun went into the clouds, the birds that lost their white blood cells flew where it hurt. The control group navigated normally even in the cloud.

So it seems strongly that the iron in the liver has an effect. We still need to find out how the bird senses this.

Iron ends up in the liver from hemoglobin in the blood, when phagocytic white blood cells break down old red blood cells. The homing pigeon literally has directional instinct in its blood.