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Platypus
A platypus closes its eyes and ears as it dives for prey. Electroreceptors in its bill detect the weak electrical fields produced when small animals move their muscles. Other receptors in the bill sense movement in the water. Together those clues help the platypus locate prey in murky streams.
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Loggerhead sea turtle
A loggerhead hatchling can use regional differences in Earth’s magnetic field as directional cues. In one study, hatchlings exposed to fields from different points on their Atlantic route changed the direction they swam. The turns would help a turtle stay in currents that carry it around the ocean.
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Western diamondback rattlesnake
On each side of the head, between eye and nostril, there is a pit that responds to infrared radiation. A warm animal gives off infrared, and the response of the pits varies with the direction it comes from. That gives this snake a way to locate a heat source even in darkness.
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Big brown bat
A big brown bat sends out short calls and listens for their echoes. The time it takes an echo to return gives it a clue to distance. In cluttered surroundings, the bats change the interval between calls, helping them sort out which returning echo came from which sound.
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Harbor seal
When something swims by, it leaves a trail of disturbed water. Harbor seals can follow that trail with their whiskers. In one study, seals whose eyes were covered tracked the wake of a small model submarine. That’s how researchers showed the whiskers could guide the animal along a trail with nothing visible to follow.
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European robin
The European robin’s magnetic compass uses the tilt of Earth’s magnetic field. Imagine the lines of the field dipping toward or rising from the ground. The bird can use their slope to tell poleward from equatorward. This is a directional cue that migratory robins can use to orient.
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Peters's elephantnose fish
Peters’s elephantnose fish sends out weak electric pulses of its own. Sensors in the skin pick up how nearby objects change those pulses. Researchers found the fish could distinguish the electrical signature of a mosquito larva from those of other objects. Compare that with the platypus, which picks up signals produced by prey.
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Common cuttlefish
A common cuttlefish can detect the direction in which light waves are polarized. In one study, young cuttlefish responded to moving stripes that differed in polarization. The stripes gave them a cue to motion distinct from the ordinary brightness contrast of light and dark bands.
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Common vampire bat
Small pits around the snout allow this bat to sense radiating warmth at close range. In one study, it detected warmth coming from nearby surfaces. The experiments showed that a bat can learn about its surroundings through heat as well as through the sounds it hears.
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Monarch butterfly
Monarch butterflies famously use the sun when they migrate. In a flight simulator, autumn migrants also adjusted their headings when researchers changed the tilt of the magnetic field. The magnetic response depended on short-wavelength light, making it a possible guide on overcast days.
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Odontodactylus scyllarus
This mantis shrimp has receptors in a band across each eye that respond to polarized ultraviolet light. Other receptors can detect circular polarization in visible light, in which the direction of the light wave’s electric field rotates. These are two ways of picking up features of light beyond its brightness and color.
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African bush elephant
An African savanna elephant picks up vibrations that have traveled through the ground. In a field study, elephants were more likely to move away from some vibrations produced by people than from elephant vibrations. Researchers think sensitive nerves in the feet may be one way they detect the signals.
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Common bottlenose dolphin
A common bottlenose dolphin makes clicks and listens to the echoes that come back through water. It can detect a target even when other echoes are bouncing around at the same time. That is one reason a dolphin can use sound to pick out objects underwater rather than relying solely on a clear view.
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