Seabirds get jet-lagged just like humans — and it causes navigational errors in their foraging trips, according to a study published today in the journal Science.
Researchers who study bird navigation wanted to understand better how seabirds know where they are, and where they’re going, across vast distances. Birds generally use the Earth’s magnetic fields and the position of the sun when flying, which they use in combination with their natural circadian rhythm or internal clock to gauge time of day.
When birds fly east to west they “experience time shifts, potentially causing mismatches between their internal clock and local time,” the study said.
If the birds’ clocks are thrown off by jet lag, they can misjudge where they are and their intended destination, said Patrick Lewin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and co-author of the new study.
Lewin and his colleagues tracked the migratory seabird Manx shearwaters, which take long fishing trips to find food and then return to their nests, taking the most direct route possible.
“Shearwaters make it really easy for us,” Lewin said. “Because we know where their nests are, we know exactly where they’re aiming for. And so that means we can measure whether they’re going a little bit too far clockwise or a little too far anticlockwise and compare that to what we would expect if they’re using the sun as a compass and experiencing this time shift.”
Lewin said he hopes his research will help to better understand humans’ internal clocks, too.
“The way that our clocks work is very similar to how a bird’s clock works,” Lewin said. “It might be quite interesting to know how these animals are coping with frequently jet-lagging themselves.”
