MAGNETIC ORIENTATION BY HATCHLING LOGGERHEAD SEA TURTLES
It is puzzling to think about how animals travel over vast distances even though they have never been there before. Humans use maps and gps's to travel. Animals on the other hand have to use other means to travel to places they have never been. One type of animal that travels far distances across the ocean are logger head sea turtles.
In an article by Kenneth J. Lohman, a professor in the Neural and behavioral biology department at the University of Illinois, he talks about the mechanisms that loggerhead turtles use to travel. The article suggests that the turtles are born with the innate ability to determine directional information from the earths magnetic fields. To study this researchers created a large man made tank. They put logger heads in the tank and manipulated different angles and intensities of magnetic fields similar to the fields found in nature. The researchers found that the different magnetic fields caused the turtles to travel in different directions.
Scientists believe that other migratory animals might use similar mechanisms to travel long distances. The physiological mechanisms the turtles use are still undetermined. The researchers think it has something to do with photo pigments that the turtles possess. This research has made it clear that animals us mechanisms that we still don't fully understand to migrate and orient themselves around the globe.
Posted by Charles Carville (sept.28)
Interesting! You might look at how some birds such as pigeons and albatrosses navigate. If I remember correctly they also use magnetic fields to orient themselves.
ReplyDelete-Alex Sprague
Sounds like an interesting article! I've heard about birds using magnetic fields to migrate, but I've never thought about how aquatic animals like sea turtles know how to migrate. Its interesting that animals as unrelated as birds and sea turtles both use the same method. I wonder if its an example of convergent or divergent evolution.
ReplyDelete-Lauren Lynch
Both loggerhead sea turtles and some migrating birds use the earths magnetic fields to migrate. I found an interesting article that explains some simmilarities and differences betweeen the mechanisms that both species use.
ReplyDeletehttp://cgiss.boisestate.edu/~kasper/geoph297wiki/index.php/Biomagnetics:_Species_Association_with_Earth's_Magnetic_Field
posted by- Charles Carville