Sharks Use Earth's Magnetic Fields to Guide them Like a Map

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for mrpg:

Sharks use Earth's magnetic fields to guide them like a map:

"It had been unresolved how sharks managed to successfully navigate during migration to targeted locations," said Save Our Seas Foundation project leader Bryan Keller, also of Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory. "This research supports the theory that they use the earth's magnetic field to help them find their way; it's nature's GPS."

[...] Keller realized the needed studies would be easier to do in smaller sharks. They also needed a species known for returning each year to specific locations. He and his colleagues settled on bonnetheads (Sphyrna tiburo).

[...] The question then was whether bonnetheads managed those return trips by relying on a magnetic map. To find out, the researchers used magnetic displacement experiments to test 20 juvenile, wild-caught bonnetheads. In their studies, they exposed sharks to magnetic conditions representing locations hundreds of kilometers away from where the sharks were actually caught. Such studies allow for straightforward predictions about how the sharks should subsequently orient themselves if they were indeed relying on magnetic cues.

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