Study: Dung Beetle first animal found to use the Milky Way for Navigation
By Mourad Anouar
Morocco News Tribune
Oklahoma City, U.S.A–Scientists discovered that dung beetles use the Milky Way to help for orientation and navigation, thanks to new research from Lund University, National Geographic reported.
The discovery, which was conducted by biologists at Sweden’s Lund University, came to prove that the dung beetle is now the first animal to use the light of the Milky Way for charting a course at night.
“African ball-rolling dung beetles exploit the sun, the moon, and the celestial polarization pattern to move along straight paths, away from the intense competition at the dung pile”, according to a summary published in the journal Current Biology this week.
“Even on clear, moonless nights, many dung beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths,” Marie Dacke, a coauthor of the study, said in a statement.
NBC News interviewed Marie Dacke, who said “This led us to suspect that the beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation — a feat that had, to our knowledge, never before been demonstrated in an insect.”
Lund University’s website ran an article yesterday, which stated that “The findings raise the possibility that other nocturnal insects also use stars to guide them at night. On the other hand, dung beetles are pretty special. Upon locating a suitable dung pile, ball-rolling dung beetles shape a piece of dung into a ball and roll it away in a straight line. That behavior guarantees them that they will not return to the dung pile, where they risk having their ball stolen by other beetles”