Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles | Nature

Loggerhead sea turtles, which undergo long-distance migrations, can learn magnetic signatures associated with different geographic areas and have two different magnetic senses, each based on a different underlying mechanism.

Subjects Animal behaviour Animal migration Abstract Growing evidence indicates that migratory animals exploit the magnetic field of the Earth for navigation, both as a compass to determine direction and as a map to determine geographical position 1 . It has long been proposed that, to navigate using a magnetic map, animals must learn the magnetic coordinates of the destination 2 , 3 , yet the pivotal hypothesis that animals can learn magnetic signatures of geographical areas has, to our knowledge, yet to be tested. Here we report that an iconic navigating species, the loggerhead turtle ( Caret

related reading

• Path integration - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
• Homing pigeons reveal true magnetism | Naturenature.com
• When Models Manipulate Manifolds: The Geometry of a Counting Tasktransformer-circuits.pub
• Migration and stopover in a small pelagic seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus: insights from machine learningpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• The Strange and Secret Ways That Animals Perceive the World | The New Yorkernewyorker.com
• Memory formation in the absence of experiencenature.com
• Mixed Feelings | WIREDwired.com
• Chapter 51 - Behavioral Ecology | CourseNotescourse-notes.org
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014 - Press release - NobelPrize.orgnobelprize.org
• A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviournature.com
• Wake-like skin patterning and neural activity during octopus sleepnature.com
• Neural circuits underlying visually evoked escapes in larval zebrafishpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov