Editing Magnetoreception (section)

== History ==

Biologists have long wondered whether [[Animal migration|migrating animals]] such as [[Bird migration|birds]] and [[Sea turtle migration|sea turtles]] have an inbuilt magnetic compass, enabling them to [[Animal navigation|navigate]] using the [[Earth's magnetic field]]. Until late in the 20th century, evidence for this was essentially only [[Ethology|behavioural]]: many experiments demonstrated that animals could indeed derive information from the magnetic field around them, but gave no indication of the mechanism. In 1972, Roswitha and Wolfgang Wiltschko showed that migratory birds responded to the direction and [[Magnetic dip|inclination (dip)]] of the magnetic field. In 1977, M. M. Walker and colleagues identified iron-based ([[magnetite]]) magnetoreceptors in the snouts of [[rainbow trout]]. In 2003, G. Fleissner and colleagues found iron-based receptors in the upper beaks of [[homing pigeons]], both seemingly connected to the animal's [[trigeminal nerve]]. Research took a different direction in 2000, however, when Thorsten Ritz and colleagues suggested that a [[photoreceptor protein]] in the eye, [[cryptochrome]], was a magnetoreceptor, working at a molecular scale by [[quantum entanglement]].<ref name="Winklhofer 2010">{{cite journal |last=Winklhofer |first=Michael |title=Magnetoreception |journal=[[Journal of the Royal Society Interface]] |volume=7 |issue=suppl_2 |date=3 February 2010 |pages=S131-4 |doi=10.1098/rsif.2010.0010.focus |pmid=20129954 |pmc=2843998 }}</ref>