Dung beetles guided by the Milky Way

Despite the tiny brains, dung beetles perfectly define their own path. They can move in a straight line in the selected direction, guided by the light of the Milky Way.

Dung beetles are fresh excrement and form one balloon size is several times larger than the beetle. When they wheeled him away, they often take off and while circling over the globe. Previously it was thought that since they express the joy of discovery, but in fact the beetles fly to determine the direction.

Eyes dung beetles because of its unusual structure, able to analyze the direction of polarization of the light, so when the beetle raises his head, he sees the light from the moon or the sun, depending on the time of day. These signals help to avoid the beetle, for example, an unwanted meeting with relatives who can take the food found.





This property of the beetles were found by chance during investigations of perception insects polarized light of the moon. The experts observed the insects with the help of video cameras. It was necessary to find out how bugs behave under the moonlit sky, moonless sky and in cloudy weather. In some cases, beetles wore special caps cardboard covering his eyes. It turned out that if something interferes with their ability to look at the sky (clouds or caps), the beetles stray from the planned route, while in the light of the star are in a straight line.

Something seemed strange: the eyes of beetles are not so perfect, in order to distinguish the light of individual stars, so that the experiments moved to the planetarium, where beetles showed the sky with only the brightest stars, with a diffuse band of the Milky Way, and finally a full picture of the night sky. Dung beetles are able to cross the scene equally fast as in "natural" heaven, and in the presence of one of the Milky Way, and in the presence of only the brightest stars have lost direction and moved slowly.

This means that dung beetles for navigation guided by the Milky Way, almost like humans. However, it is characteristic only for the bugs living in those areas of the world where the Milky Way distinguishable. How do they cope in other regions is still unknown.

via factroom.ru