Elephant seals show stunning navigation skills - can return home even after traveling thousands of kilometres

 

Even with Global Position System, elaborate maps and precise calculation of distance and speed, many are still unable to locate their destination or reach on the appointed time.

Yet, as per a sciencedaily.com report, this is not the case with pregnant northern female elephant seals or Mirounga angustirostris. Every year, between December and March, these creatures breed on the beaches located on the west coast of Canada, Mexico and the US. On becoming pregnant, the females leave these breeding beaches and migrate. They go on a journey of about 240 days over 10,000 kilometres across the Eastern North Pacific Ocean in search of food, before returning to the breeding beaches and giving birth within five days of arriving.

Intriguing as it may sound, now a study that has been published in the journal Current Biology stated that this spectacular ability to navigate without any aid is due to the creature’s internal map sense, which plays the vital role of a built-in GPS.

Also read: Single-minded male elephant seals eat to mate and not live!

Elaborating on this, Roxanne Beltran of University of California Santa Cruz said: "We found that migrating elephant seals know how far they are from their breeding beach thousands of kilometres away. They also know approximately how long it will take them to get back." Beltran and her colleagues, who included Dan Costa, were aware of the superior navigation skills of seals but couldn’t explain as to how these animals were able to get back to the beach in time for the breeding season.

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