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RE: Homing Pigeons? Try Homing Crocodiles...



On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, John Scanlon wrote:
Dann Pigdon wrote:

... signals sent by cryptochromes in the eyes of garden warblers are
processed by the optic lobe in the brain:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/27/2044505.htm

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/070924-5.html

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And we might thus imagine that birds do indeed 'see' the magnetic field,
perhaps as 'lines of force' projected onto the visual field. But earlier,
Dann also said this was

not something you'd expect in largely nocturnal crocs

and I beg to differ: if there's something like a virtual heads-up display of lines of force it would be much more accessible (contrasting with the visual background) at night, when it would also be more useful (migratory birds do a lot of night-flying, do they not?)