When humans give birth, most of us go to a nearby hospital. Fish, however, migrate long distances, sometimes thousands of miles, to reproduce. Sounds crazy, right? Some fish are anadromous, traveling from the sea into freshwater and others are catadromous, moving from rivers into saltwater. Newly hatched salmon can travel thousands of miles through rivers and into the ocean before travelling back to their river of origin just to lay their eggs and then die. How do they know where to go when they’ve travelled so far from their home? Magnetoreception it was originally assumed that fish wandered aimlessly before being swept up into the Gulf Stream. However, a few years ago, it was discovered through a series of experiments at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center in the Alsea River basin that salmon may rely on magnetoreception, or a sense that allows animals to detect a magnetic field to determine direction, to find their way back home again. Scientists exposed hundreds of young Chinook salmon (an anadromous species) to different magnetic fields that exist in the latitudinal extremes of their habitat. The fish would then orient themselves in a way that would lead to their feeding grounds. Eels, Too! Recently, it was discovered that eels had the same aptitude for magnetoreception. Adult eels from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean travel thousands of miles to the Sargasso Sea, the only sea without land borders, to lay their eggs. The offspring spend a few years there before making the trip back to the respective coasts of their parents. While adult eels have shown an inclination to magnetic navigation in past studies, it was thought to be much harder to prove the same inclination in juvenile eels due to their erratic behavior. Marine biologists from the University of North Carolina and the University of Miami in Florida crafted an underwater arena designed to represent a compass to better study these juvenile eels. The researchers simulated magnetic fields from different portions of their migratory journey and found that when exposed to a magnetic field similar to that of the Sargasso Sea, most of the eels travelled southwest demonstrating that they do travel in certain directions when exposed to specific magnetic fields. In subsequent tests, it was shown that other magnetic fields produced similar results. But Wait, There’s More Humans also have an innate knack for magnetoreception. Tests run by Joe Kirschvink, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology demonstrated that when a rotating magnetic field was passed between human subjects in a counterclockwise motion, certain neurons in the participants’ brains responded to this change, generating a spike in electrical activity. So, our brains are reacting to the signals but we just might not know how to actually respond to that primal instinct. The next time you’re lost and can’t find your way home, rely on your instincts. You never know! You might just find your way back. (Actually, maybe just use GPS. It’s more reliable.) Do you think with enough practice that humans could actually utilize this sense? We hope so! We’re lost right now and our spidey-magnetoreception senses aren’t tingling at all! Keep an eye on our News & How-Tos section for more magnet-related revelations.