Scientists says pigeons could have a 'gut feeling' to help them navigate

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]The magnetic sense has been this mystery for almost 100 years. Now we think we have a simple and yet super amazing mechanism of how this can work.

[00:00:13]Under regular conditions, they wouldn't need a magnetic sense. But if it's overcast, they do and then it is an additional sense that they need or they rely on it as the the single most important then. So So I I think that navigation, orientation and navigation they they are multi-sensory systems. So they they you you use everything you can as a bird for example or as a mammal.

[00:00:42]Um vision, smell, but in that case if everything else fails, then you have the magnetic sense and that's really important.

[00:00:50]>> We figured out that it's these super paramagnetic macrophages in the liver surprisingly in pigeons, not in the spleen and we even figured out that these macrophages really have a close connection to nerve fibers that are innovating the liver. So that's good good um candidate to transmit information either via direct cell-cell contact or maybe they are releasing some signaling molecules and then this magnetic sense what they have, this magnetic feeling then they can transmit to the to the nerve fibers and it can be can be delivered to the brain and uh yeah, it can help birds pigeons to navigate.