How to Study Magnetoreception in Large Mammals

© Burda et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and redistribution in any medium, provided that the original author and source are credited. Almost half a century ago, the first firm evidence for magnetoreception (i.e. the ability to sense the geomagnetic field) in the robin was provided, representing the first evidence for magnetoreception in a vertebrate (Wiltschko and Merkel 1966); a quarter century later Burda et al. (Burda et al. 1990) demonstrated magnetoreception for the first time in the laboratory in African mole-rats, the first demonstration in mammals. Over the last 25 years we have revisited the question of magnetoreception in mole-rats and made some spectacular discoveries (Marhold, Wiltschko, and Burda 1997, Nemec et al. 2001, Thalau et al. 2006, Wegner, Begall, and Burda 2006, Burger et al. 2010). Subsequently, magnetoreception has been described also in the blind mole rat Spalax ehrenbergi supersp. (Kimchi and Terkel 2001, Kimchi, Etienne, and Terkel 2004, Marhold et al. 2000), the laboratory mouse Mus domesticus (Muheim et al. 2006), the Siberian hamster Phodopus sungorus (Deutschlander et al. 2003), and in the bats Eptesicus fucus (Holland et al. 2006, Holland et al. 2008) and Nyctalus plancyi (Wang et al. 2007). However, the question if large mammals also sense the geomagnetic field was left unanswered.