Robins navigate by Earth's magnetic field (2008) #Shorts

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Robins navigate by Earth's magnetic field. They have magnetite crystals in their beaks, [music] acting like a tiny biological compass. And here's the strange part. They don't read the field the way we read a compass. They read the angle. European robins sense whether the magnetic field lines point upward toward the pole or downward away from it. It's called an inclination [music] compass.

[00:00:23]They need blue or ultraviolet light to activate it. And [music] scientists first confirmed this in controlled trials back in 2008. Most birds migrate [music] using stars, but not these guys.

[00:00:34]Something about the invisible force field around our planet [music] speaks to them. And scientists are still figuring out exactly how the robin hears it.

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