Study
Long-distance navigation and magnetoreception in migratory animals
Mouritsen, Henrik
Nature, 2018
A synthesis of experimental work on how migratory animals find their way, covering sun and star compasses, magnetic sensing, olfactory cues and the evidence for map-like position sense.
- Studied in
- Aves, Chelonioidea, Lepidoptera
- Sample size
- review of the migratory navigation literature
Navigation in migratory animals is multi-sensory and redundant: compasses of several kinds are well established, while the mechanism of the magnetic sense and the existence of a true positional map remain unresolved.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Magnetoreception most likely involves light-dependent radical-pair chemistry in the eye, but no single proposed mechanism is yet established.
How NatureHQ reads it
The useful correction here is against the common statement that animals "have a magnetic sense" as though the matter were settled. Compass orientation using the magnetic field is well demonstrated. *How* the field is detected is not, and the difference between knowing which way is north and knowing where you are is one popular coverage almost never draws.
- A review, so it inherits the limitations of the studies it draws on.
- The magnetoreception literature has a history of results that resisted replication.
- Evidence is concentrated in a few well-studied migratory species.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Animal navigation
Navigating animals use several overlapping compasses, not a single magic sense
Animal navigation
Hatchling turtles that have never migrated still swim the right way for where they are
Bird migration
A bird’s magnetic compass tells poleward from equatorward, not north from south
Magnetoreception
That animals steer by the Earth’s magnetic field is not in doubt. What physically detects it has been argued for fifty years and is still unresolved.
Magnetoreception
The leading idea is that a bird’s compass is chemical and needs light: absorbing a photon creates a pair of molecules whose behaviour depends on the angle of the surrounding magnetic field.
Magnetoreception
Knowing which way is north is a different problem from knowing where you are, and the evidence for the two is very different in strength.
Animal navigation
Knowing which way is south does not tell an animal where it is. A compass gives direction; working out position from an unfamiliar place is a separate ability, and far fewer animals have been shown to have it.
Animal navigation
Change only the magnetic field around an adult migrant — leaving it exactly where it is — and it shifts its heading as though it had been carried to the place that field belongs to.
Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0176-1
Checked against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.