Ballet Dancing Beetles

Beetles pirouette on balls of dung to take “snapshot” of stars and navigate the savannah.

16:44 16 May 2016

Researchers found that dung beetles, which are known to navigate using the light of the Milky Way, dance on top of a ball of dung to take a photo of how celestial bodies are aligned. This action enables the insects to know where they are going and roll off this ball of dung in a straight line across the savannah.

 

Basil el Jundi, researcher at Lund University in Sweden, said: 'Other animals and insects also use the position of celestial bodies to navigate, but the dung beetles are unique - they are the only ones to take a snapshot where they gather information about how various celestial bodies, such as the sun, moon and stars, are positioned,' 

 

He added: 'We are the first to have shown that dung beetles are taking these snapshots,' 

 

'We are also the first to show how they store and use the images inside their tiny brains.'

 

'Perhaps they also gather information while rotating or going for a spin in the air, but we don't know,'

 

The findings, which were published in the scientific journal Current Biology, could help develop navigation systems for driverless cars.