This process is primarily used by aquatic animals such as sea turtles and salmon, although some migratory birds and mammals also practice similar reproductive behaviors.
The benefits of returning to the precise location of an animal's birth may be largely associated with its safety and suitability as a breeding ground.
When seabirds like the Atlantic puffin return to their natal breeding colony, which are mostly on islands, they are assured of a suitable climate and a sufficient lack of land-based predators.
Their ability to travel back, several years later, to the river system in which they were spawned is thought to be linked to olfactory cues, the "taste" of the water.
Once reaching sexual maturity in the Atlantic Oceans, the female Loggerhead makes the long trip back to her natal beach to lay her eggs.
[2] After spending four or five years in the ocean and reaching sexual maturity, many salmon return to the same streams they were born in to spawn.
From there, the animal locates where the river dumps into the sea with the chemical cues unique to the fish's natal stream.
[4] With the overfishing of this species, scientists have much to learn about their spawning habits in order to sustain the population for both a reliable food source and a healthy ecosystem.
Atlantic puffins spend the winter at sea and then return to the places of their birth, as has been shown by ringing birds.
This idea is known as the "geomagnetic imprinting hypothesis"[6] The concept was developed in a 2008 paper that sought to explain how sea turtles and salmon can return to their home areas after migrating hundreds or thousands of kilometers away[7] In animal behavior, the term "imprinting" refers to a special type of learning.
[10] Thus, it is plausible that sea turtles, and maybe salmon also, can recognize their home areas using the distinctive magnetic fields that exist there.
[12] The first one, possibly based on the earth's magnetic field (see Geomagnetic Imprinting above), is used in the open ocean and probably brings salmon close to their home river.
[13] In one particularly famous experiment, young salmon were imprinted with artificial chemicals and were released into the wild to perform their normal migrations.
These regions will usually have few predators, the correct temperature and climate, and will have the right type of sand for turtles because they cannot lay eggs in wet and muddy environments.
[3] Although scientists have been studying marine animals that perform natal homing for years, they are still not positive that geomagnetic imprinting and chemical cues are the only navigational tools they use for their incredible migrations.
Fortunately, as technology has progressed, there are several tools now available to scientists such as data loggers equipped with magnetometers that can easily be attached to the animals.