JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Israeli researchers and their partners in the UK and the U.S. have discovered that bacteria that live in birds and other animals serve as their compass for navigation and orientation, Tel Hai College in northern Israel said Monday.
In a study led by the college, along with the The Aleph Laboratory and the University of Central Florida, published in The Royal Society journal, the team examined how animals use Earth's magnetic field to find their way in air, sea and land and travel vast distances.
The researchers examined bacteria whose movement is affected by magnetic fields (magnetotactic bacteria), which live in animals.
These bacteria have a kind of iron needle that makes them to "swim" along the earth's magnetic field.
The researchers found that the bacteria sense the movement of the animals in which they live and thus they gain a magnetic sense, pointing the animals' direction during movement.
To prove the existence of these bacteria in animals, the researchers used meta-genomic databases (of genetic material collected from environmental samples) and discovered a great variety of magnetotactic bacteria.
Moreover, it was found that certain species of animals host certain species of magnetotactic bacteria, as, for example, baleen whales were repeatedly found to have the same species of magnetotactic bacterium.
In addition, similar bacteria were found in very different mammals such as whales and bats, or penguins and sea turtles.
"Like the evolutionary similarities among birds and reptiles, the magnetotactic bacteria in penguins and sea turtles also showed similarities as well", the researched explained. Enditem
