This article is more than 1 year old

DOLPHINS SMELL MAGNETS – did we hear that right, boffins?

Xavier's School for Gifted Magnetotaceans

Scientists have discovered that dolphins are sensitive to magnetic fields, shedding some light on how the lusty mammals navigate the oceans.

A team at the Université de Rennes in France carried out experiments on six bottlenose dolphins to determine whether they behaved differently when exposed to magnets.

The researchers placed identical barrels in four connected pools within the dolphinarium at Planète Sauvage in Port-Saint-Père, filling some of them with magnetic material.

The dolphins were immediately drawn to the magnetic barrels, which they approached far more quickly than the plainer containers.

To make sure the test was fair, the researchers watching video of the experiment were not told which of the barrels contained magnetic stuff. The containers were all shaped the same to make sure the dolphin's echo-location sensed them in the same way.

"Dolphins are able to discriminate between objects based on their magnetic properties, which is a prerequisite for magnetoreception-based navigation," says Dorothee Kremers, who led the study. "Our results provide new, experimentally obtained evidence that cetaceans have a magenetic sense, and should therefore be added to the list of magnetosensitive species."

It is thought that magnetic fields help some beasties navigate around the world. They have also been blamed for stranding events, where dolphins or whales end up swimming onto a beach en masse. ®

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