Sea turtles do a “turtle dance” when they recognize a feeding zone. When turtles in the lab are expecting food, “they come up to the surface, stick their heads out of the water, open their mouths, and start to spin and move their flippers wildly!” says Kayla Goforth, the author of a new study published in Nature.

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Goforth and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill put juvenile loggerheads in two different tanks, each associated with its own magnetic field. The turtles were only fed in one of the tanks. When they were in the “feeding zone,” the little turtles started to dance. “Showing that turtles can learn a magnetic field is especially exciting as it had never been shown previously,” says Goforth.

Sea turtles travel thousands of miles in their lifetime but often return to their favorite feeding sites.

“To make these lengthy journeys, turtles are likely using magnetic fields for navigation,” she says. “Turtles can use both a magnetic compass sense to determine the direction in which they need to travel, and a magnetic map sense, to determine where they are and where they need to be.”

This discovery gives us a glimpse into the lives of these fascinating animals. “Being able to learn magnetic fields likely ties in to how adult turtles return to the same beaches they were born on to lay their own nests,” she says.