Saturday, January 11, 2014

Magnetoreception Ability Discovered in Dogs

It’s Getting Worse

A new study out of Europe has demonstrated for the first time magnetoreception abilities in dogs. We recently discussed these amazing abilities in a range of species including fish, turtles, butterflies and homing pigeons. Even though researchers have not yet figured how these species sense and process the Earth’s magnetic field data, it is clear that these species use much more than merely the compass direction given by the field. In some cases it appears the organism is using the field intensity and inclination (the angle which the magnetic field lines make with the Earth surface) data. This new study on dogs has found yet another measurement. The dogs appear to be sensitive to real-time changes in the field’s declination angle (the difference between the field lines and true north).

So it is not so much the magnetic field, but rather the rate of change of the field, that the dogs were observed to be sensitive to. This not only implies a precise measurement ability as these declination variations are subtle, but it also implies the ability to store past measurements, so the rate of change can be evaluated somehow. This ability to compute the declination rate of change, akin to taking the derivative of a function in calculus class, is yet another monumental problem for evolution. This new magnetoreception finding reveals evolution to be even more foolish, and it’s just going to get worse.

8 comments:

  1. if accurate evolutionist must explain how such a like feature evolved in so many unlike critters.
    Of coarse its this way with so much biology but at least they can say we all started as fish and had most of our basic parts.
    Yet this thing must of come after the separation of biological forms and so highly impossible it evolved.
    got a hunch a lot more things like this are coming along.
    Do evolutionists have a textbook answer?

    ReplyDelete
  2. wonder if this explains why animals get fidgety when earthquakes are about to happen. Evolutionists should be getting pretty fidgety about now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Have you read the article, Cornelius? Have you looked at the data? I bet not.

    Have a look at Table 2, which reports the statistics of dog alignment. A small change in the orientation of magnetic field (1 to 4 degrees) causes the dogs to change preference in the orientation by a whopping 65 degrees! The standard deviation is 50 degrees or more! These guys are looking at random noise and making grandiose claims. And you uncritically accept them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I did read the paper. I'm not sure you did though. The main finding is that there is a statistically significant difference in the dog's behavior between periods of stable declination ("quiet" MF) and fluctuating declination. The results clearly bear that out.

      Delete
    2. I read the paper and looked at the data. Did you look at the data?

      The claim of statistical significance does not stand up to scrutiny. Their null hypothesis was 600 random variables on a unit circle. In that case, the mean r would be 0.04. But they only had 70 dogs, so if each dog has a preferred (but still random) orientation then the expected r would be 0.12. Their value of 0.216 is less than two standard deviations.

      Delete
  4. If the existing astronomically improbable capabilities were not a problem for evolutionists I don't see why new facts would interfere with their faith now. However, it is still fascinating to learn of God's creation.

    I once saw a car with a symbol I wasn't sure what it meant. It had the word Darwin combined with a fish. I asked the car owner what it meant. He explained that it represents evolution devouring the church. In his explanation he made it very clear his strong negative opinion of the church. So obviously a big part of his belief in evolution was religiously motivated. This confirms what you've been saying all along that evolution is based on religion.

    ReplyDelete
  5. P.S. A clue. The standard deviation for a uniform distribution between 0 and 180 degrees is 52 degrees.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I wondered whether the paper was a spoof. There doesn't seem to have been much effort to demonstrate any causal relationship by experiment. It seems there is some dispute over whether cows align themselves north/south due to magnetic influence that is disrupted by power lines.

    http://www.nature.com/news/the-mystery-of-the-magnetic-cows-1.9350

    More research needed, I think.

    ReplyDelete