Biologic advantage of magnetoception
Humanity is often said to have 5 senses, but this isn't entirely accurate. This is one question of several in a series I am asking regarding going beyond the 5 senses.
Magetoception is one of the others. It's strongest in birds (although there's some debate about that--there's evidence that they use a kind of sound sonar to actually navigate).
The mechanism for this is not completely understood; it is theorized that this has something to do with deposits of ferric iron in our noses. This would make sense if that is correct as humans who are given magnetic implants have been shown to have a much stronger magnetoception than humans without.
If I were building a race with an expanded version of this sense, what would the advantages be evolutionarily? From what I have looked at, navigation is the big one, but I don't know how else it would help and what the advantages might be.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/73887. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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