Scientists have discovered that female Antarctic fur seals have an uncanny ability to return to within a body length of where they were born when it's time to breed.
Even if they don't manage to get this close, the majority of females give birth to pups within 12 metres of where they themselves were born.
'It's as if they have some sort of in-built GPS system,' says Dr Joe Hoffman from the University of Bielefeld in Germany, who led the study. 'Or it could be simply that they're using cues, like smell, that we can't measure. What is remarkable is that the colony is featureless, so it's impressive they find their way back.'
What's also striking is that these seals may have spent up to five years feeding hundreds of kilometres out at sea before coming home.
Knowing more about how these seals live their lives will help scientists understand how populations affect the fragile local ecosystem of South Georgia in the south Atlantic Ocean.
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