Dung Beetles and the Galaxy

[drhoz]

Five million years ago, protohuman hominids were stumbling around South Africa, and around their feet the industrious dung beetles rolled their precious balls of shit. I'll give you three guesses which one was paying more attention to the wider universe.

Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden has proven in a series of elegant experiments that included blocking their view of the horizon, fitting them with little cardboard hats, and taking them all out on a trip to the Planetarium, that the dung beetle Scarabaeus satyrus uses the glow of the Milky Way to ensure that it's navigating in a straight line. A useful trick, since it works on cloudy, moonless nights, and doesn't require being able to see individual stars. This makes the dung beetle the second animal known to be aware of the galaxy, even if it has no concept of what that milky glow actually is. But to be fair, neither did humanity until very recently, so full marks to the beetles.
By a happy coincidence, S. satyrus is a relative of the Sacred Dung Beetle, the one that the Ancient Egyptians pictured as rolling the Sun around.

NatGeo has a dung beetle game - “Dung Beetle Derby” - that reflects the rough-and-tumble competition of a dung beetle's busy day. Admittedly, few dung beetles require the assistance of flying snails, but level names like Poochinko did make me laugh.

EDIT: A TED talk on Dung Beetle navigation

Click to view

And a longer article about the stargazers, from the New Yorker :)