Dancing Baby Sea Turtles Help Researchers Unravel the Mysteries of Their Navigational Superpowers [View all]

Dancing Baby Sea Turtles Help Researchers Unravel the Mysteries of Their Navigational Superpowers

Loggerhead turtles can identify specific magnetic signatures, according to a new study, hinting at how the aquatic reptiles manage to return to the same foraging and nesting sites over and over again



In captivity, baby loggerhead turtles do a little dance when they know food is coming. Ken Lohmann / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sea turtle migrations are impressive: These aquatic reptiles swim thousands of miles across the open ocean to return to the same foraging grounds and nesting sites. They don’t always take the shortest, most direct route, but they do eventually get to where they’re going.

Now, a new study is offering more insights into this advantageous behavior. Baby loggerhead turtles can identify specific magnetic signatures, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“It is amazing that sea turtles have access to a wealth of invisible information that they use to navigate in ways that are hard for us to even imagine,” says study co-author Catherine Lohmann, a zoologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to Cosmos magazine’s Imma Perfetto.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dancing-baby-sea-turtles-help-researchers-unravel-the-mysteries-of-their-navigational-superpowers-180986060/