European Robins and Quantum Navigation

Whisky education from Whisk(e)y Advent 2025 (2025-12-17). Summary below; full write-up with sources and images: calendar/2025-12-17.qmd.

A tangent from the ‘Redbreast’ name: migratory birds may navigate via the Earth’s magnetic field using cryptochrome proteins that form quantum-entangled radical pairs under blue light. Orientation experiments with European robins support the theory.

Verbatim source text

Reproduced from calendar/2025-12-17.qmd (Whisk(e)y Advent 2025).

I was going to talk about Pedro Ximénez Sherry, but I got distracted by European Robins. Here’s the Wingspan card for the European expansion set depicting the European Robin that our “Redbreast” whiskey has as its namesake. It’s a powerful ally early in the game. Listen to its call here.

How birds collectively navigate is an outstanding problem. Some suggest that the birds must have iron-sensitive receptors. Recent biophysicists have proposed a mechanism for explaining how birds use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate. Proteins called cryptochromes present in the eyes of birds form quantum-mechanically entangled pairs when struck by blue light. These are very sensitive to magnetic fields, and research suggests that the oscillation of these unpaired electron states is sensitive enough to pick up the very weak magnetic field of the Earth.

So far, a set of orienting experiments have been done with European Robins, shielding groups of them from electromagnetic radiation and observing their behavior. The results are interesting, and support the quantum-mechanical navigation theory so far.

If none of that is interesting to you, take a listen to this Radiolab podcast instead. It’s a good one.