New scientific research indicates that the fox species may possess an "internal" compass. Apparently this is why foxes are such good hunters.
"Foxes often utilise a hunting behaviour known as ‘mousing’, where a high jump takes the animal above small prey such as voles, which are doubtless surprised to find the relatively large predator descending on them from out of the sky."
"Now Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and his team show that foxes tend to jump in a north-eastern compass direction. In addition, successful attacks are “tightly clustered” to the north, they report in Biology Letters."
"Their latest discovery came about when Jaroslav Červeny, an author on the magnetic-cow study, noticed a fox mousing in a northward direction. With his curiosity piqued, the hunt was on and some 592 mousing jumps by 84 foxes were observed and analysed."
"When hunting in low-cover – where prey would be spotted visually – there was no real preference in jumping direction. But in high vegetation or snow there was a significant preference for north-eastern jumps. And in cover 74% of successful attacks clustered around 20 degrees clockwise of magnetic North, with 15% due south and most other directions yielding no dinner for the fox."
"The association also appeared unrelated to factors that you might expect to influence the direction a predator approached a tasty victim – such as wind direction and the position of the Sun. In addition, in high cover or snow there is no possibility for shadows cast by foxes to be a factor, notes Burda."
"Once they had convinced themselves that foxes did align, says Burda, the question became why."
“Our favourite hypothesis,” he says, “is that the magneto-reception can be used as a rangefinder to measure distance.”
To read more about this research please click on the following link:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/01/fox_rangefinder_sense_expands.html
Source of image:http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2009/4/fox-dives-two-feet-into-snow.jpg
It is interesting that some animals have this built-in-compass and that some of us (like yours truely) have no idea which direction I am facing when I am outside or inside!
