Wednesday, February 25, 2009In a bold step forward for the science of crocodile avoidance, wildlife managers in Florida have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from entering to residential neighborhoods by taping magnets to their heads.
The method attempts to disrupt the crocodiles' 'homing' ability.
They got the idea from researchers at Mexico's Crocodile Museum in Chiapas, who reported in a biology newsletter they had some success with the method.
'We said, "Hey, we might as well give this a try,"' said Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's crocodile response coordinator.
The Mexican researchers say they have successfully used the technique to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.
Crocodiles are notoriously territorial, and when biologists move them away from urban areas to new homes in the wild, they often head straight back to the place where they were captured.
Scientists believe they rely in part on the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate, and that taping magnets to both sides of their heads disorients them.
'They're just taped on temporarily,' Hord noted.
'We just put the magnets on when they're captured and since they don't know where we take them, they're lost. The hope would be that they stay where we take them to.'
Hord and his co-workers have tried it on two crocodiles since launching the experiment in January, affixing 'a common old laboratory magnet' to both sides of the animals' heads.
One got run over by a car and died, but the other has yet to return, Hord said.
Crocodiles which return to their old haunts twice after being moved on are sent to zoos or otherwise placed in captivity, something biologists hope to avoid if the magnet experiment works.
'This one is by no means a really well-developed scientific study with a control group. I's just something we thought we would try,' Hord cautioned.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Florida_to_start_taping_magnets_to_crocodiles&in_article_id=556636&in_page_id=2
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