Magnetic GPS to combat blindness

2004/01/22 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Zoologia

Blind mole rats lack an eye and long remain in underground excavations. And they have to make long trips to look for food. And, although it seems surprising, they are able to leave the ‘house’, to travel and return to the same place. But how do they adapt if they have no eye?

For short distances they use smell and balance to choose direction. However, over long distances, scientists have concluded that they combine all this information with the Earth's magnetic field. In fact, during laboratory tests, it has been proven that the change of external magnetic field produces a mixture of rats.

The mechanism is not clear, but there are scientists who have proposed that blind mole rats have magnetite crystals in the nose, and as magnetites are oriented according to the magnetic field, rats are able to continuously check the direction.

Photo: DAP