Flight compass
About to head northWHETHER it is a herd of gazelle, a court of kangaroos or a crash of rhinos, the sight of a group of animals turning from a predator and bolting in unison in the same direction is one of the most majestic in nature. It is also one of the least understood. Now a group of researchers think they have come up with the reason why such animals seem instantly to know which way to run and not crash chaotically into one another: they use a sort of compass.
To investigate this, Petr Obleser, a PhD student at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, and his supervisor, Hynek Burda, studied roe deer commonly found on hunting grounds in South Bohemia and West Moravia in the Czech Republic. That some animals have an innate awareness of Earth’s magnetic field is well known: many use it to guide their migration. Herdsmen and hunters have also long observed that grazing animals often tend to align themselves facing either north or south, which the researchers suspected was in readiness to escape in either of those directions should a threat emerge.
And that is largely what the roe deer did, Mr Obleser,…Continue reading
Source: Economist