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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by kulpims.

75% of the time, it works every time.

BAGGER 288! BAGGER 288!

http://videosift.com/video/Tribute-to-the-giant-mining-machine-the-Bagger-288

I have seen this, not out in the middle of nowhere, but through an office window in Waltham, Massachusetts. The hunter was a mother fox with three kits, and she seemed to come up with a mouse more often than not. Wish I could remember which direction she jumped in ...

What kind of babble is this? Be specific, how is he actually using the magnetic field to tell where the prey is? Why does that depend on being North Aligned? How does facing north help plot a trajectory? Sounds like pseudo-science BS.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dive, missile, guidance, snow, hunt, track, mice' to 'dive, missile, guidance, snow, hunt, track, mice, fox' - edited by Grimm

http://phys.org/news/2011-01-predation-foxes-aided-earth-magnetic.html

Its not at all impossible, if it can sense a fixed point in front of it(the north pole) all thats needed is to compare the exact direction from which the sound originate and triangulate to get the exact distance, I suppose. it might not be harder for a fox to do then it is for us to intuitively calculate the path of an incoming ball so we can catch it..

EDIT: I reread the article, it seems the hypothesis is that the fox lines up the direction of the sound from the prey with the direction to the North Pole (which is below the horizon in most places), it then knows that the prey is at a fixed distance. its basically what I said, except its the simplest form of triangulation, with just a fixed distance and one line..

The mice can probably see a shadow through the snow, and they run away from the direction it comes from. Jumping from South to North probably gives the least amount of warning, increasing the chance of a kill.

According to the article, cloud cover, time of day etc had no effect on the success rate, things like that would drastically alter the results (evening them out) , if the shadow was the cause.

BTW, i'm still skeptical myself, as it seems pretty wild, but it sure is interesting if it is true that there is a constant, directional bias in the success rate..

According to the video he's using the kind of math missiles use to hit their targets. Sounds a reasonable enough explanation to me.

I believe they're hypothesizing what causes the fox to be more successful when facing north. Science is observation so if there's a trend, then why? The problem here is that the narrator states this seemingly as fact, rather than the theory of how this is possible given the increased success rate.