Pigeons might find their way by following their liver

Hello Nature readers,
Today we learn that immune cells in a homing pigeon’s liver might help it to navigate, investigate new treatments to restore heart-muscle cells and visit an unusual reptile museum in Ecuador.

Magnetic cells help pigeons navigate

Iron-loaded immune cells in the livers of homing pigeons could help the birds navigate using Earth’s magnetic field. Researchers found that macrophages in pigeon liver tissue are full of a magnetic form of iron called ferritin. When the team depleted these cells in a group of homing pigeons and released them in overcast conditions, the birds got lost along a route they’d nailed in the sunshine. The results are “intriguing”, but don’t confirm that ferritin is behind the pigeons’ knack for navigation, says sensory ecologist Catherine Lohmann.

Heart therapies cast off shadow of the past

The first clinical trial aimed at using gene therapy to grow new heart-muscle cells is now underway — one of a new wave of such treatments to regenerate the heart. Some scientists are cautiously optimistic that these therapies could one day be used to treat conditions such as heart failure. But others remain sceptical, in part because the field’s past is mired in controversy. In the early 2000s, a flurry of papers reported that the heart has stem cells that can regenerate heart muscle — but some of the results have since been retracted.

Rocket explosion spells a setback for NASA

A ‘New Glenn’ rocket made by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s space-tech firm Blue Origin exploded during a routine engine test on 28 May, damaging much of the surrounding Space Launch Complex 36 (LC-36). The accident, during which no one was injured, puts a question mark over the timeline of NASA’s Moon Base 1 mission, scheduled to launch this autumn. The mission is slated to use Blue Origin’s Endurance lander, flown on a New Glenn rocket, to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon. But LC-36 is the only facility in the world that can launch a New Glenn, and rebuilding it could take months, experts say.

The homegrown snake museum

Around a decade ago, biologist Alex Bentley stumbled upon an unusual museum in a small Ecuadorian town. Inside was farmer Manuel Genaro Peñafiel’s collection of snake specimens he’d been amassing since 1958. The collection was vast, but had never been formally documented. In 2023, Bentley and Peñafiel, with the help of more than 100 other townspeople, set to work cataloguing the specimens within — all 666 of them. Some species in the collection hadn’t been seen in the surrounding habitat for decades, and seven had never been formally recorded in the area.

Alaska’s tsunamis-in-waiting

At any moment, a mass of slow-moving bedrock could collapse and plunge into Portage Lake in Alaska, triggering a tsunami that could wipe out a visitor centre, capsize tour boats and threaten cruise ships. The cause? Destabilization of the bedrock due in part to a retreating glacier and melting permafrost, both accelerated by climate change. Independent geologist Bretwood Higman has made it his life’s work to sound the alarm about such tsunamis-in-waiting. Government bureaucracy and an unwillingness to face up to the problem mean progress is slow. “The most likely scenario is something really, really bad is going to happen before we are on top of any of it,” says Higman.

Futures: science fiction from Nature

A jaded explorer decides to strike out on their own in Scraping and your suit is designed to keep you alive at all costs in Sarcophagus.

Podcast: How I jazz up my science

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander credits his saxophone for making him the scientist he is. As a jazz musician, the ability to improvise has made him “more fluid and flexible mentally in terms of approaching and attacking physics problems”, he tells Nature’s Working Scientist Podcast. And playing alongside others has taught Alexander how to collaborate effectively. “You have to be able to coexist and play with them in service of the music,” he says. Similarly, “it's important to be able to be in dialogue with other physicists from different schools of thought”.