Quran & Quantum Biology: How Birds Find Their Way

Every year the Arctic tern, a bird weighing barely a hundred grams, flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back, a round trip that tracking studies have measured at tens of thousands of kilometres. Many migrating birds cross oceans at night, without maps, and arrive at the same place year after year. How do they do it? The answer scientists are exploring today lies in one of the strangest areas of modern science: quantum biology.

What the Quran says about birds in flight

The Quran draws our attention to birds more than once. In Surah Al-Mulk 67:19 Allah asks: 'Do they not see the birds above them with wings outspread and folding in? None holds them up except the Most Merciful. Indeed He sees all things.' In Surah An-Nahl 16:79: 'Do they not see the birds controlled in the air of the sky? None holds them up except Allah. Indeed in that are signs for a people who believe.' The verses invite us to look at flight itself as a sign of Allah's care.

The magnetic compass in a bird's eye

Experiments since the 1960s have shown that many birds can sense the direction of Earth's magnetic field. A leading explanation, called the radical-pair mechanism, places this sense in the eye. When light strikes a protein called cryptochrome, it creates a pair of molecules whose electrons are linked in a quantum way. Earth's weak magnetic field can influence how that pair behaves, and this may change the signal the bird's eye sends to the brain. In simple words, the bird might literally 'see' the magnetic field.

In 2021 researchers reported in Nature that cryptochrome 4 from the European robin is magnetically sensitive in the laboratory, which supports this idea. But scientists are careful: the full mechanism inside a living bird is still being studied, and birds also use the sun, the stars, landmarks and smell to navigate.

Where the reflection stands

The Quran does not mention cryptochromes or quantum physics, and we will not claim that it does. What it does is tell us to look at the birds and recognise that nothing holds them except the Most Merciful. Modern research shows that holding a bird on its course may involve some of the most delicate processes in nature, down to the behaviour of single electrons. For a believer, that deepens the meaning of 'None holds them except the Most Merciful'. This is reflection, not proof, and that is exactly how the Quran asks us to read the signs in creation.

Status of this research

This page accompanies our research document on the Quran and quantum biology. The video is coming soon. When it is ready, it will appear here and in the Quranic Science section of the website.