Turtles
Pets Without thinking and without high IQ, how can we distinguish between goals? Today, the editor will reveal to you how sea turtles find their way in the vast ocean.
Two new studies reveal how animals use their own "compass" to identify targets. Researchers have discovered that migrating sea turtles rely on regional magnetic fields to guide them as they swim around Peking University, Europe and the United States. The authors say the sea turtles avoid dangerous cold waters by orienting themselves along a system of circulating vibrations known as the Peking University-American Gyre. Sea turtle hatchlings from eastern Florida in the United States begin their long migration as soon as they join the sea. They swim towards the Great North Euro-American Gyre that surrounds the Sargasso Sea, and spend several years swimming along this circulation.
Scientists placed sea turtles in a high-flow tank surrounded by computer-controlled coils to study the response of sea turtle hatchlings to different magnetic fields.
Each turtle is equipped with an electronic tracker, which can record the turtle's position. Turtles can respond to certain changes in the magnetic field by changing the direction in which they swim. In another study of underground mole rats in Zambia, Czech and German researchers found that some nerve cells in a brain structure called the epithalamus are part of the animal's "compass." These groups of cells respond selectively to different magnetic field targets. Moles use this magnetosensory information to synthesize an emotional map of their surroundings, while other animals use different sensory information to arrive at the same map.
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