Magnets on their heads keep the crocs away

Source: Agencies | February 26, 2009, Thursday |

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FLORIDA wildlife managers have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods by taping magnets to their heads to disrupt their "homing" ability.

Researchers at Mexico's Crocodile Museum in Chiapas reported in a biology newsletter that they had some success with the method, using it to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.

"We said, 'Hey, we might as well give this a try," Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's crocodile response coordinator, said.

Crocodiles are notoriously territorial and when biologists move them from urban areas to new homes in the wild, they often go right back to the place where they were captured, sometimes traveling up to 16 kilometers a week to get there.

Scientists believe that they rely in part on the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate, and that taping magnets to their heads disorients them.

"They're just taped on temporarily," Hord said. "We just put the magnets on when they're captured and since they don't know where we take them, they're lost. The hope would be that they stay where we take them to."

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Magnets on their heads keep the crocs away

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