everdev 7 years ago

If the magnetic field flipped 780k years ago [0] and animals do rely on it for survival (like migrations), wouldn't we see mass extinctions around those magnetic flips? Or maybe magnetic field navigation is a weak signal out of many?

[0] https://www.livescience.com/18426-earth-magnetic-poles-flip....

  • TeMPOraL 7 years ago

    If animals learn where to migrate from their parents/flock, then it would be reasonable to assume they learn the relation between where they should be going and what their magnetosense is telling them. The article implies that even during transition, the magnetic field is pretty much constant within a lifetime of any individual animal.

    Now a tangential question I have is: how the hell do animals know where they should migrate? Is this learned from observation, or do they have some innate idea of where they should go?

partycoder 7 years ago

Cows face north-south when grazing.

  • jacquesm 7 years ago

    That was one of the most interesting applications of Google maps that I know of.

pwaivers 7 years ago

So this is pretty incredible. We know that animals can detect magnetic fields, but we don't know how they sense it!

I hope one day humans can have the same sense.