Solar Storms Can Mess With Whales' Ability To Navigate, Cause Strandings (alt: NYTimes)
The ocean's most mammoth, docile beasts manage to find their way around the oceans with relative ease. And that's especially true for the gray whale, a creature that makes the biggest migration of any mammal, traveling over 12,000 km across the planet to feed and breed. New research suggests gray whales may navigate with a kind of seventh sense that allows them to detect variations in the Earth's magnetic field -- and this sense can be adversely affected by the sun.