Thus, sea turtles can find their hatching place.

A new paper by researchers at the University of Central Florida may help answer where the “sixth” magnetic sense of some animals may come from, such as how sea turtles can find their birthplace.

For more than half a century, researchers have been concerned with the question of where the magnetic senses of some animals come from.

Robert Fitak, an associate professor at UCF with his English and Israeli colleagues, recently published an article in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in which he presents a hypothesis. According to him, the magnetic sense of higher animals comes from the symbiotic coexistence with magnetotactic bacteria.

Magnetotactic bacteria are special bacteria whose movement is affected by magnetic fields, including the Earth’s magnetic field.

The Earth’s magnetic field is detected by several different animals, such as sea turtles, birds, fish, and lobsters. Sea turtles, for example, use this sense to find their way back to the same beach where they were born.

Understanding how living things perceive the magnetic field can also help people harness the Earth’s magnetic field for their own navigational purposes.

Furthermore, the result can be used in ecological research, for example to assess the effects of changes in the magnetic environment, such as how the construction of high-voltage power lines affects biodiversity. The use of magnetism in targeted drug delivery can also benefit from the results.

Fitak and his colleagues investigated the largest genetic database of microbes (Rapid metagenomic annotations using subsystem technology) and concluded that DNA samples of certain magnetotactic bacteria were found in higher animals.

Magnetotactic bacteria were the first to be shown to attach to many animals, including penguins, mock turtles, bats, and the northern whale.

Researchers do not yet know where these magnetotactic bacteria can live in host animals, but they are likely exposed to nervous tissue in the eye or brain, for example.

However, much more research is needed to test the hypothesis.