Complexity Digest 2003.02 - 11.02

13-Jan-2003

Animal Behaviour: The Lobster Navigators, Nature Bookmark and Share

Excerpt: When experimentally displaced in geomagnetic space, spiny lobsters act as if to make their way home. This is a fascinating case of navigation by an invertebrate using a magnetic map sense. (...) From the results of elegant displacement experiments in both geographical and geomagnetic space, they conclude that the impressive homing capacity of spiny lobsters is probably based on a map sense involving geomagnetic cues. This is the first time that such true navigational capability has been plausibly ascribed to an invertebrate.