Magnetism and animals

As I continue to read the wonderful and fascinating book Wayfinding, there’s a section about a wide range of animals that likely use magnetism to navigate, in other words they have a built-in compass they can reference.

Experiments showed that some animals are still able to figure out and align their movements to the cardinal directions despite being indoors with no access to the sun or anything else to orient off of. In other cases it’s assumed based on the migration patterns of whales that they have to be using something akin to a magnetic compass.

There’s zero actual proof for any of this. No biological compass has ever been found, and there’s great doubt one will be. A functioning biological compass could be no more than a few magnetized cells, which would be nearly impossible to find.

There’s something majestic in this as it stands alongside human folly proud in its assumption of knowing everything.