Washington-SANA
A recent study found that sharks use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate the world's oceans as they sail thousands of miles to return to the same breeding ground every year.
According to the British newspaper the Daily Mail, the study, conducted by researchers from the University of Florida, showed that fish are sensitive to changes in the Earth's magnetic field and use them as a form of the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Brian Keeler, leader of the team of researchers in the study, said that the researchers relied on blocking the Earth's magnetic field and replacing it with artificial signals, and because the shark migrates once to the same place every year, the researchers were able to predict where the sharks would try to swim to.
Keeler added that the researchers assumed that if sharks used the Earth's magnetic field, they would swim northward when in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. They also expected that there would be no preference in direction if the false magnetic field was in line with the natural magnetic field and the animals' behavior was already in line with expectations.
The study indicated that sea turtles were known to use the Earth's magnetic field as a navigation tool, and now it turns out that sharks do this as well, which has baffled scientists for 50 years due to the difficulty of conducting experiments.
