When captive loggerhead sea turtles anticipate food, they do a little dance. The turtles raise their heads out of water, open their mouths, flap their flippers and spin in circles.
Not only is this “turtle dancing behavior” cute, it was also the key to unlocking a significant scientific discovery by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The prestigious international science journal Nature published the study Feb. 12. Kayla Goforth, a recent doctoral graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences’ biology department, is the lead author of “Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles.”
Early on in her graduate studies at Carolina, Goforth was fascinated by sea turtles returning to the same feeding sites again and again throughout their lifetimes — despite traveling up to 10,000 miles across the planet. She hypothesized that these turtles used Earth’s magnetic field to memorize specific geographic areas that they associated with food, and she devised an experiment in the biology department’s Lohmann Lab — run by husband-and-wife duo Kenneth and Catherine Lohmann.
“Kayla began to wonder if we could get the turtles to associate the magnetic signature of a geographic area with food — and therefore act out this turtle dance behavior,” said Kenneth Lohmann, the Charles P. Postelle Jr. Distinguished Professor of Biology. “She really took the lead in this. I wasn’t at all sure in the beginning whether it would work, but we were happy to have her try, and it turned out remarkably well.”