The May 28 issue of Science features two important new papers on how birds and bats sense and interpret the Earth’s magnetic field —each with important implications for understanding low-level electromagnetic interactions.
A team from Germany’s Oldenburg University exposed bats to relatively weak, broadband RF radiation in the 10 kHz-300 MHz band, They found that the effects on their ability to navigate lasted longer than expected. “Our experiments show that EM noise exposure disrupts the orientation of bats several hours beyond the exposure period,” they wrote. [emphasis added]
“Disruptive Effects of Brief RF Noise Exposure on Migratory Bat Navigation,” Science, May 28, 2026.
An accompanying commentary, “Silent Interference,” points out:
“These effects persisted for more than two hours after the exposure period. The findings demonstrate that human-generated RF noise at levels that are commonly encountered by wildlife can have a long-lasting impact on sensory or navigational mechanisms that control animal orientation behaviors.”
As one editor of Science, Sacha Vignieri, explains: “These results suggest that the ever-present din of our devices may be having a bigger effect than was previously thought.”
The paper took two years to clear peer review.
The same issue of Science has another extraordinary paper on animal navigation. Indeed, it’s the cover story: “Finding Home: Liver Macrophages Guide Pigeons on Cloudy Days.” It too has a commentary: “Getting Home in the Dark.”
If this were not in the nation’s leading science journal, the work would likely be dismissed. In short, a team of German, Danish and Australian scientists are proposing a new way to explain how homing pigeons detect the Earth’s magnetic field —through the action of macrophages in the liver. Messages are then transmitted to the brain. [Macrophages are a particular type of white blood cells—more here.]
Here’s a somewhat more formal explanation from the paper:
“Three principal theories for magnetoreception in pigeons have been proposed to date. Our findings support a fourth mechanism, on the basis of the collective sensing capacity of superparamagnetic macrophages, located predominantly in the liver, that enables perception of geomagnetic direction.”
“How could macrophages transmit a signal encoding magnetic field information to the brain?” The commentary tries to explain, though not without raising some concerns about the underlying science.
https://microwavenews.com/papers/two-remarkable-new-findings-magnetic-navigation