Seals use incredible navigation skills to return to site where they were born

Forget Satnav, now there is seal-nav. Scientists have discovered that some seals are capable of finding their way back to the exact spot where they were born even after spending five years out at sea.

The Antarctic fur seals' remarkable homing instinct, which is thought to be the most accurate of any sea mammal, allows the creatures to return to within a single body length of the spot where they were born to give birth to their own pups.

Nearly four million of the sea mammals breed in huge colonies on the virtually featureless beaches of South Georgia every year. After being born, the seals spend five years out at sea feeding before returning to the island to breed.

Using radio tags placed on 335 seals shortly after they were born, researchers at the British Antarctic Survey have discovered that each seal returns to exactly the same location on the beach once they start breeding year after year.

But while typical human Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which use satellites orbiting the earth, can pinpoint a location to an accuracy of around 15 feet, the seals were found to be accurate down to as little as six feet.

Exactly how the seals achieve this feat has left the scientists baffled, but they believe the creatures use a kind of internal compass that helps them find their way across the Southern Ocean to the correct location on the right beach.

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