If we say that a particular protein in the eyes of pigeon causes it to know a geographic location via earth’s magnetic field, how do we know it is right? On what basis do we conclude? Obviously, the pigeon is not gonna say about itself.
In: Biology
One way is to chemically or genetically knock out that chemical and see how the behavior of the animal changes. When testing animal senses, seeing whether they respond to certain stimuli also works. If an animal blinks when a green light flashes in front of their eyes, but not a red one, we can conclude that they don’t see the red frequency.
There are a few different ways. You can observe animals in the wild and if you see an animal behaving in a way that suggests that it doesn’t have the same senses functioning as other members of its species, you can investigate that animal and even potentially take a blood sample to sequence its DNA.
You can also raise large numbers of a test animal in a laboratory and specifically look for any mutations that pop up in order to figure out what each of the proteins in that pork indism does.. A very large amount of our knowledge comes from using fruit flies and other organisms this way.
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