BLIND mole rats make up for their lack of sight and poor hearing with a
鈥渟ixth sense鈥�, says Tali Kimchi of Tel Aviv University in Israel.
Kimchi trained mole rats to reach a goal at the end of a labyrinth. The rats
went through their paces again, but this time half of them had to navigate the
labyrinth when the magnetic field was reversed by a pair of electromagnetic
coils. This group took far longer to reach their goal and made more mistakes
(The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 204, p 751). Earlier work by
other researchers had suggested that some rodents align their nests according to
the local magnetic field direction. 鈥淏ut no one had proved that any mammals use
Earth鈥檚 magnetic field to navigate,鈥� Kimshi says.