cellular an hour ago

If a magnet were attached to the turtle, would it lose its sense of direction?

  • dilawar 33 minutes ago

    It should.

    Original paper is behind a paywall and this article has no details

    The abstract says

    > Conditioned responses in this new magnetic map assay were unaffected by radiofrequency oscillating magnetic fields, a treatment expected to disrupt radical-pair-based chemical magnetoreception4,5,6, suggesting that the magnetic map sense of the turtle does not rely on this mechanism. By contrast, orientation behaviour that required use of the magnetic compass was disrupted by radiofrequency oscillating magnetic fields. The findings provide evidence that two different mechanisms of magnetoreception underlie the magnetic map and magnetic compass in sea turtles.

FridayoLeary 3 hours ago

I'm wondering what happens when the earths magnetic field flips. A mass die off?

>“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.”

we can never hope to compete with nature, but i do find that statement funny. They literally built a device to help emulate turtle navigation. GPS is a part of life. Humans can detect and have found uses for almost every part of the spectrum. Compasses have existed for centuries. I'm not being dismissive of this discovery at all. I just find it remarkable how much we have managed to achieve.

  • ranie93 2 hours ago

    According to wikipedia the reversals can take a while

    >Some sources estimate the most recent four reversals took on average 7,000 years to occur. Clement (2004) suggests that this duration is dependent on latitude, with shorter durations at low latitudes and longer durations at mid and high latitudes. Others estimate the duration of full reversals to vary from between 2,000 to 12,000 years.

    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

    So maybe that's enough time for the biomass to adapt?