Trout
After spending 3 years at sea and traveling up to 300 kilometers away from home, a rainbow trout can swim straight back to its original hatching ground, following freshwater streams inland and rarely heading in the wrong direction. This remarkable feat of navigation likely relies on many senses; the fish have superb eyesight and smell. But the trout also seem to rely on Earth’s magnetic fields, which point them in the right direction. Now, for the first time in any animal, scientists have isolated magnetic cells in the fish that respond to these fields. The advance may help researchers get to the root of magnetic sensing in a variety of creatures, including birds. Read the full story at Wired.
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