Current Affairs Czech scientists find animals' "inner compasses" upset by power lines
Not long ago, a chat over a few beers about the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field on animals got a group of Czech zoologists thinking. Turning to Google satellite pictures for answers, they saw something that had gone unnoticed throughout thousands of years of animal husbandry, that herds of large mammals align themselves north-south when grazing – wind and terrain permitting. Now Dr. Hynek Burda, one of those involved in the earlier finding, has made the news once again by discovering that electrical power lines disrupt this instinct.
A half year ago, we found that cattle and deer prefer to align their bodies
in a south-north direction. And yesterday we published another paper.
Namely we found that under overhead high-voltage power lines, this
alignment is disrupted. So because the power lines disrupt the magnetic
field of the Earth, this is nice evidence that the alignment I mentioned is
actually based on magnetoreception – that these animals can actually
perceive the magnetic field.
Migratory animals of course are magnetoreceptive, what purpose however could this ability serve in large animals.
Well actually these animals – red deer, roe deer, cattle – are originally also migratory animals. Bison in America, which migrate over large distances in prairies where there are no landmarks. Or let’s say the red deer or the European Buffalo, they actually live in dense forests and they can also migrate over long distances. Like elk, for instance, which come from Poland to the Czech Republic.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that human beings are similarly magnetically attuned?
Hynek Burda
We can imagine that human beings can also perceive the magnetic field. It
may be that some people can do it and some people don’t do it, or don’t
have this ability or haven’t discovered it. One can imagine that for
example the Aborigines in Australia or natives in the Amazonian jungle
would need it. Maybe in us it is only rudimentary. But we have got some
reports from many people who argue that they have this ability but they
cannot use it. It is a problem to study humans. For example the sleeping
position is always effected by architecture, by customs, and so on, so one
is perhaps one is used to sleeping with his or her head by the window, and
so on. And also the magnetic field in a building is not homogenous, it is
disturbed by water pipes and so on. But with animals there are no such
customs, there are no architectural disturbances and so on, so it’s
easier to find this out with animals than with humans.
Can you imagine some way in which the electrical effect could be detrimental to the animals, or indeed to humans?
We haven’t studied the electrical effect. Because these high-voltage
power lines create not only an electric effect but also a magnetic effect.
And we have only studied the effect of this magnetic field. And it’s
difficult to say, in any case we see that roe deer seek out these places
voluntarily, in an open landscape they graze under the power lines. But it
doesn’t mean anything. We also do a lot of things voluntarily, we smoke
and so on. But the purpose of our study was not to look for any health
effects. That of course can be a follow-up study. But Now we have only
found that these power lines – or rather the magnetic field produced by
power lines power lines – has an effect on behaviour. And if it has an
effect on behaviour it means it has to have an effect on the cells, on
molecules, on the brain.
