\n
![\"EarthSnap\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/earthsnap-banner-news.webp.webp\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
What they found was a kind of internal compass, tuned not just to where the bats were flying, but to something far more consistent and surprising.<\/p>\n
The perfect bat testing ground<\/p>\n
Latham Island sits about 25 miles off the Tanzanian coast. It\u2019s small \u2013 only about the size of seven soccer fields \u2013 and there\u2019s nothing much on it: no people, no buildings, no tall trees. That\u2019s exactly why it was chosen for the research.<\/p>\n
Scientists needed a natural environment that felt wild but was still manageable. The island had to be isolated so the bats wouldn\u2019t just fly away, but also big enough for them to stretch their wings. <\/p>\n
The region had to be open enough to avoid signal blockages, yet rich enough in features for real navigation. That\u2019s a rare combination.<\/p>\n
The expedition was led by a team from the Weizmann Institute of Science<\/a>. They packed everything they needed \u2013 lab equipment, camping gear, satellite tech \u2013 and headed to Tanzania. <\/p>\n The researchers set up a temporary lab in a building they rented and renovated at the country\u2019s Central Veterinary Institute. Then they outfitted six local fruit bats with the smallest GPS-tracking, brain-recording devices ever made.<\/p>\n Battling storms and setbacks<\/p>\n The trip didn\u2019t go smoothly at first. Cyclone Freddy<\/a> \u2013 one of the longest-lasting tropical cyclones ever recorded \u2013 was still stirring far to the south.<\/p>\n Strong winds made it impossible for the bats to fly for the first week. But when the skies finally calmed, the experiment took off.<\/p>\n Each night, the bats were released to fly solo for up to 50 minutes. As they flew, more than 400 neurons deep inside their brains lit up \u2013 specifically the ones bats use for navigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The compass inside a bat\u2019s brain<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where it gets interesting. Every time a bat pointed its head in a certain direction \u2013 say, north \u2013 a specific group of neurons would activate. This created what researchers call an \u201cinternal compass<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n The brain activity had been seen before in lab setting. But now, for the first time, it was seen in the wild. Even more surprising, the compass didn\u2019t shift. It was global and consistent.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the big questions in mammalian navigation is whether head-direction cells function as a local compass or as a global one,\u201d said Professor Nachum Ulanovsky of the Weizmann Institute\u2019s Brain Sciences Department. <\/p>\n \u201cWe found that the compass is global and uniform: No matter where the bat is on the island and no matter what it sees, specific cells always point in the same direction \u2013 north stays north and south stays south.\u201d<\/p>\n Bats trust sight, not magnetism<\/p>\n Some animals use Earth\u2019s magnetic field<\/a> to navigate \u2013 especially birds. But the bats didn\u2019t. If they had, their compass would\u2019ve been accurate from the start. Instead, it took them a few nights to stabilize their internal compass.<\/p>\n \u201cWe observed a gradual learning process until, by the third night, the bats\u2019 compass orientation became very stable,\u201d said Ulanovsky. \u201cSuch learning doesn\u2019t fit with using the magnetic field, which had been there since the very first night.\u201d<\/p>\n So what were they using? Most likely, landmarks. The island had cliffs and boulders the bats could see, and fruit bats<\/a> rely heavily on their vision. This kind of navigation takes time \u2013 because unlike a compass that\u2019s always there, landmarks have to be learned.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery natural environment is full of landmarks that can be seen, smelled or heard,\u201d Ulanovsky said. <\/p>\n \u201cLatham Island\u2019s topography included cliffs and large boulders that could serve as navigation cues. In fruit bats, sight is the dominant sense and has the longest range, so we assume they mainly rely on vision.\u201d<\/p>\n Stars not a guiding light<\/p>\n You\u2019d think bats might use the moon or stars to guide themselves, especially since they fly at night. But the study found that didn\u2019t matter much.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that the moon and stars are not essential for bats to navigate,\u201d Ulanovsky said. <\/p>\n That said, celestial bodies might still help calibrate the compass early on \u2013 giving bats an extra tool to match what they see on the ground with what\u2019s in the sky.<\/p>\n From bats to brains<\/p>\n Head-direction cells \u2013 this internal compass system \u2013 aren\u2019t just found in bats. They\u2019re in lots of mammals, including humans. <\/p>\n These cells show up very early in brain development, and scientists believe they play a big role in helping people find their way through the world.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil recently, a person unable to navigate would not have survived,\u201d Ulanovsky said. \u201cEven today, being able to orient oneself can be a lifesaver.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStudying mammalian navigation helps us hypothesize how navigation mechanisms work in the human brain and how they can become disrupted, for instance, in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Back at their home lab, the team had built large indoor spaces, including a 650-foot-long bat tunnel, to study navigation. But it turns out, nothing beats the wild.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings show there is no substitute for testing lab-based knowledge in the real world,\u201d Ulanovsky said. \u201cWe hope our study will encourage other groups, in brain sciences and beyond, to take their research out of the lab and into nature.\u201d<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time ever, scientists have tracked the brain activity of mammals navigating in the wild \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-100097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}