A new study from the University of Liverpool suggests that wandering albatrosses may use infrasound to navigate their long foraging trips. Infrasound is a type of low-frequency sound that is inaudible to humans but present in the marine environment. The researchers used GPS trackers to analyze the flight paths of 89 wandering albatrosses and compared them to modeled acoustic maps of microbarom infrasound. They found that the albatrosses orientated themselves towards areas with “loud” microbarom infrasound when departing on their flights. This study provides the first empirical evidence of seabirds responding to infrasound in a movement context.
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-evidence-albatrosses-infrasound-journeys.html