Magnetoreception and the orientation of animals

Magnetoreception — the ability of animals to sense the magnetic field and orient themselves by it — is an established phenomenon (🔬). In migratory birds, sea turtles and other species a magnetic compass is documented; the leading explanation is the radical pair mechanism in the protein cryptochrome in the eye, or possibly magnetite in tissues. It is also experimentally documented that weak artificial ELF/RF fields can disrupt a bird's magnetic compass — which shows that biological systems sensitive to weak fields really do exist.

From this it does not follow, however, that the orientation of animals is governed precisely by the Schumann resonance. The link of magnetoreception specifically to the SR is speculative (🧪): it is a separate hypothesis that cannot be derived from the general existence of a magnetic sense. It is therefore necessary to clearly distinguish two things — the well-documented magnetoreception as such from the much weaker (and as yet unproven) notion that it is mediated or used by the SR.