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Image credit:mouse: Baggie Bird 1 http://bit.ly/1LpXV9T, compass: wikimedia commons
http://bit.ly/1H9va0c, illustration by Michael Greshko
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Quantum mechanics governs the quirky, counter-intuitive way the world
works at the small scales of atoms and subatomic particles. It might
also be important for helping animals understand their place in their
surroundings. New research suggests that wood mice, commonly found in
Europe, have a built-in compass that exploits quantum processes, the
first seen in a wild mammal.
According to a study in Scientific Reports
published on April 29, wood mice placed in a container prefer to build
their nests in the parts of the container closest to magnetic north and
south. When researchers created an artificial magnetic field, the mice
nested in line with the new north-south orientation. Scientists suspect
that this compass sense comes from electrons dancing around in the
mice’s eyes.
This represents the first evidence found in a wild mammal for a
magnetic sense that relies on effects at the quantum level. Previous
research hinted at the presence of such a sense in lab mice, but that didn’t necessarily indicate the same process would happen in wild animals.
When it comes to the magnetic sense, “we know next to nothing about
mammals,” said Thorsten Ritz, a biophysicist at the University of
California, Irvine, who wasn’t involved with the study, “so this is
something new here.”
From birds to bees to bacteria, many life forms can sense Earth’s
weak magnetic field, helping them navigate their environments. Among
mammals, however, researchers had found magnetic senses only in mole
rats, bats and similar creatures specialized for navigating in the dark.
“It makes sense that [those animals] use a magnetic compass to
navigate,” said Pascal Malkemper, a zoologist at Germany’s University of
Duisburg-Essen and the study’s lead author. But it was an open question
whether or not mammals that live in the light also had this ability,
leading Malkemper to test an everyday European furball: Apodemus sylvaticus, the wood mouse.
In the summer and fall of 2013, Malkemper exiled himself to a horse
stable in the Czech Republic’s Bohemian Forest, far from technology that
could potentially throw off his sensitive measurements. He caught 45
mice one by one and placed each one overnight in its own cylindrical
container filled with materials such as sawdust and hay, which the mice
used to build bed-like nests against the container’s rounded walls.
After releasing a given mouse the next day, Malkemper measured the
compass direction of the nest each mouse left behind relative to the
center of the container’s circular floor. When he did, he found that the
mice had spontaneously snuggled up against the walls that corresponded
to magnetic north and south. When he used electromagnetic coils to
artificially change the magnetic field’s orientation, they moved their
nests.
But how does the mouse’s compass actually work?
In some organisms, such bacteria, trout and mole rats, magnetic
compasses seem to work like the ones Girl and Boy Scouts carry around,
relaying direction via magnetic iron crystals that twist and turn like
compass needles. But in other creatures, such as birds, there’s evidence
for a totally different compass that relies on quantum processes.
According to theoretical models and computer simulations, light entering
the eye activates certain proteins in the retina, temporarily ripping
apart a pair of electrons in those proteins. Separating the electrons
makes them sensitive to magnetic fields, which “sets up a particular
chemical reaction [that’s] essentially a switch,” said Ritz.
The electrons wobble like spinning tops. Changes in the magnetic
field’s direction affect each electron’s wobble slightly differently,
influencing their orientation relative to each other. This change in
relative alignment determines whether the electrons will reunite quickly
or slowly, flipping the switch toward one of two different sets of
chemical products. By tracking the ratio of these different products, an
organism can use these proteins as little quantum compasses.
This exotic compass has its quirks. Place a bird in a magnetic field
that’s flipping its north and south poles millions of times per second,
and the electrons in the animal’s compass get thrown off, like
disturbing a spinning top by repeatedly banging on the table beneath it.
This magnetic drumbeat dramatically impacts where the compass points —
or if it works at all. Animals with iron compasses don’t seem to have
this problem. It’s thought that the iron crystals involved are too tied
down to the surrounding tissue to detect these split-second 180s. This
difference made oscillating magnetic fields the perfect tool for
figuring out which kind of compass the mice were using.
Malkemper caught more mice and repeated his experiments, adding a
second, low-intensity magnetic field that alternated its direction about
as often as AM radio signals wiggle back and forth. The results were
significant: When exposed to the oscillating magnetic field—which was
about 300 times weaker than Earth’s natural one — 17 wood mice
preferred to build nests toward magnetic west-northwest and
east-southeast, as if the oscillating magnetic field was throwing off
the mice’s compass.
Malkemper thinks the oscillations change how the mice “see” the
magnetic field. “If [the magnetic sense] is based in the eye,” he said,
“we’re thinking that it’s an aid to see a magnetic field [as] a pattern
in a specific direction.” When the oscillating field gets added, this
familiar visual pattern might shift, causing the mouse to orient
differently.
Theorists see the study as a solid, early step toward a better
understanding of the quantum compass, which has also been observed in
amphibians. In fact, Klaus Schulten—the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign biophysicist who first hypothesized this compass setup
— said that “there is no element of surprise” to Malkemper’s discovery,
given what’s been found already in non-mammals.
Researchers aren’t completely sure how sensing magnetic fields
benefits mice, but John Phillips, a biologist at Virginia Tech and one
of the study’s coauthors, thinks it helps the mice assemble their
everyday movements into “a coherent map of the world they know,” he
said. “Nothing that we know about spatial processing in rodents has
provided the global reference system [they] need,” he said, suggesting
that the poorly understood magnetic sense might be involved.
The discovery underscores that animals’ compasses aren’t just used
for large-scale navigation. Unlike migratory birds and sea turtles —
which seemingly use their magnetic senses to migrate thousands of miles
— the average wood mouse lives in a home range about 500 feet across.
“The idea that the magnetic sense is…unique to animals that travel
long distances is unambiguously wrong,” said Phillips. “This is
pioneering work, and it just opens up a raft of new research.”
Questions remain. For one, the mice kept orienting toward magnetic
north and south when exposed to a magnetic field oscillating about 1.3
million times per second, but this same field disoriented birds in
previous experiments. Researchers won’t know precisely why until they
nail down the mouse’s specific pathway for sensing magnetic fields—a bit
of biological detective work that hasn’t been completed in any animal.
– Michael Greshko, Inside Science News Service
Michael
Greshko is a science writer based in Washington, D.C., who has written
for NOVA Next, the National Academies, and NYTimes.com, among other
outlets. He tweets at @michaelgreshko.