Can Sharks Detect Magnetic Fields? | Sharkcano

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[music playing]

NARRATOR: In Bimini, Bahamas, a team of experts are hoping to entice a couple sharks for an experiment and get more than they bargained for.

[music playing]

They're testing if sharks can detect magnetic fields. The answer could unlock a major mystery about how sharks find far-flung, food-rich volcanic islands and whether the island's naturally magnetic lava rock is involved.

For this open water experiment, they arranged three powerful magnets to the right and three non-magnetic controls to the left. A big hammerhead glides over the aluminum control without a glance and heads for the magnets. Hammerheads ignore the aluminum, clustering around the magnets. The nurse sharks have a greater response. Nurse sharks are drawn to the magnets. The sharks are agitated, possibly by the magnets.

[music playing]

That was fantastic. That was great. So many hammerheads down there, all over the place. A bunch of nurse sharks. The nurse sharks were playing at the magnets. Really neat dive all around.

Yeah, so that dive was crazy. We had nine hammerheads there. We got what seemed like countless nurse sharks. What we saw was that both the nurse sharks and the hammerheads did respond to the magnets. So what we can take away from that is that those weak magnetic fields that are locked in volcanic rock are something that the sharks could detect and may be able to use in navigation.

TIL: That's No Moon. It's Aliens. (Maybe.) | Today I Learned

After the Avalanche: Life as an Adventure Photographer With PTSD (Part 1) | Nat Geo Live!

View All

How To Be Alone | 4 Healthy Ways

He who sits alone, sleeps alone, and walks alone, who is strenuous and subdues himself alone, will find delight in the solitude of the forest. - The Buddha. Some people avoid solitude like the plague. Others love being alone and thrive best in solitude w…

John Bogle on How to Build Wealth in the Stock Market

But I think the idea of buying and holding forever and not trying to make adjustments requires that you’ve gotten it right in the first place. That you can only hold tight if you’ve bought right, if you will. And that is to say, have an asset allocation t…

Irony | Style | Grammar

Hello, Garans. Uh, today I want to talk about the concept of irony, which is a very difficult concept to nail down because it means so many things. But let’s begin with the best definition I can muster, which is that irony is the difference between expec…

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

LEDs don’t get their color from their plastic covers. And you can see that because here is a transparent LED that also glows the same red color. The color of the light comes from the electronics themselves. The casing just helps us tell different LEDs apa…

Office Hours with Michael Seibel

Let’s start with the first question. Speaker: “Is about doing YC, the program, the core program that people know. A common question is: why is YC worth the 7%? What do you think?” Speaker: “So when I think about YC, and I talk to founders about it, ofte…

Lecture 4 - Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing (Adora Cheung)

Thanks for having me. Um, so today I am going to be talking about how to go from zero users to many users. Um, uh, I’m just assuming that you have many great ideas in your head at this moment, and um, you’re kind of thinking about what the next step is. S…

Can Sharks Detect Magnetic Fields? | Sharkcano

More Articles