A Sense of Mystery | The Scientist Magazine®

In a small, pitch-dark room at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, a homing pigeon stands on a metal platform, its wings restrained in a leather harness and its head held in place by a plastic arm. The platform sits in the center of a 2-foot cubic frame containing electricity-conducting coils—one on every face of the cube. The coils are programmed to precisely deliver magnetic fields from any direction in three-dimensional space.