Did You Know That...Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way to Orientate?
Dung beetles, as only few people know, have remarkable navigation abilities, despite the relatively small sizes of their brains. It seems also that after dung beetles collect the dung (the most common characteristic of these animals), they do a little dance on top of it before moving it in a straight line to their final destination. The dancing actually helps the dung beetle get its bearings as it dances around in circles, looking at the stars. This behaviour, as well as the fact that dung beetles have specialized eyes which analyse the direction of light polarization , first led researchers to affirm that the beetles might be using the sky to orientate. During the day, it was easy to see that they were using this polarized light found around the sun in order to navigate. But nowadays it wasn't exactly known how they manage to navigate at night. This have led scientists to say they might be using the moon. To test this, there are a variety of different experiments conduct...