Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News and Views Q&A
  • Published:

Q&A: Animal behaviour

Magnetic-field perception

Nature volume 464, pages 1140–1142 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

The ability to perceive Earth's magnetic field, which at one time was dismissed as a physical impossibility, is now known to exist in diverse animals. The receptors for the magnetic sense remain elusive. But it seems that at least two underlying mechanisms exist — sometimes in the same organism.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Animal magnetism.

E. OLSEN/FLPA; T. PUSSER/NATUREPL.COM; B. MANSELL/NATUREPL.COM; N. PROBST/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM; T. PUSSER/NATUREPL.COM

Figure 2: Earth's magnetic field.
Figure 3: Hypothetical model of magnetite-based magnetoreception.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kenneth J. Lohmann is in the Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA. klohmann@email.unc.edu,

    Kenneth J. Lohmann

Authors
  1. Kenneth J. Lohmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lohmann, K. Magnetic-field perception. Nature 464, 1140–1142 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/4641140a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/4641140a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing