Finding a magnetic compass when butterflies

AabiaWeather.com - The American magazine "Nature Communication" said that the butterfly that migrates every year between the United States, Canada and Mexico is able to navigate by means of a magnetic compass.

After several experiments conducted by scientists, they found that there is a hidden mechanism for navigation that enables the butterfly, which belongs to the class "Danaus plexippus", to adhere to the required path even in rainy weather.

This butterfly, which starts from the eastern United States and southern Canada to fly towards the southeast, is famous for the long distances it travels to reach the forests west of Mexico City, where it spends the winter.

Scientists also recently discovered the existence of a solar sensor that enables the butterfly to orient, in its sensor horns, but they did not know how it could maintain the desired direction in rainy weather, hence the assumption that the butterflies possess a compass-like device that measures magnetic declination.

Scientists have placed some butterflies in basins equipped with an artificial magnetic field, to find that after changing the magnetic declination, the butterflies flew in the direction of the north, not the south, as usual.