Despite the tremendous progress that man has made in the field of science, especially space, experiments have proven that animals are an indispensable tool.
Space Science, a science website, reported that NASA researchers used the Sea Elephant to understand a phenomenon associated with climate change.
Scientists put an antenna and a sensor on the bodies of these huge animals that live near the South Pole, while they lie on the beaches.
The researchers sought to track the temperatures in the ocean’s waters, to gain a deeper understanding of how the oceans store energy with the recent climate changes that have occurred on the planet.
The sea elephant dives in waters 80 times a day, and for a depth of about one kilometer.
Before NASA, 20 years ago marine scientists had used sea elephants to understand the region around the South Pole.
The scientists said that these animals are more efficient than humans in discovering the oceans, and they explained that the elephants of the sea helped them to understand what are known as “medium-sized vortices” that can extend to a circle with a diameter of 50 to 500 km.
These eddies create areas of dense and less dense water, just as they do in air layers. These vortices are usually tracked via satellite, but information about them remains incomplete.
Leah Siegelman, visiting researcher at NASA’s laboratory in California, said that sea elephants helped to know the depth of these swirls, which amounted to 500 meters, and did not occur on the surface of the water as scientists previously believed.
