Dung Beetles Guided by Milky Way

"Dung beetles manage to maintain straight roll paths even on moonless nights"[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/yi5101b428.jpg[/atsimg]

They may be down in the dirt but it seems dung beetles also have their eyes on the stars.

Scientists have shown how the insects will use the Milky Way to orientate themselves as they roll their balls of muck along the ground.

Humans, birds and seals are all known to navigate by the stars. But this could be the first example of an insect doing so.

To me, this is a very interesting discovery. I appears that the dung beetle uses, at least, the Milky Way Galaxy for navigation. It has been shown that they use the sun and moon to help direct themselves, but now scientists have discovered they use the Milky Way band on moonless nights.

Beetles were taken to the Johannesburg planetarium for testing. They were placed in a black sided box to block their vision of "Land marks" and different patterns were shown in the planetarium. They were not able to navigate by stars, but successfully navigated when the Milky Way was shown. They had the same positive results when only a single lit band was shown in the place of the Milky Way.

It is just amazing to me to see that more creatures use astronomy for direction guidance. I knew Man does this as well as birds but now we are finding out that, more creatures do this as well.

Read more: www.bbc.co.uk...

Interesting as well because of the connection
with scarab (dung) beetles and the renowned sky charters of ancient Egypt .
The Milky Way was the Nile and one of the scarab's job was pushing the Sun across the sky.

reply to post by Agarta


Zuzi the celestial dung beetle instilled the wisdom of the universe in all her children. "We thank you Zuzi for our planet" (rolled up turd ball).

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Interesting find OP. May be a Khepri connection..

Khepri (also spelled Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a god in ancient Egyptian religion. Khepri was connected with the scarab beetle (kheprer), because the scarab rolls balls of dung across the ground, an act that the Egyptians saw as a symbol of the forces that move the sun across the sky. Khepri was thus a solar deity. Young dung beetles, having been laid as eggs within the dung ball, emerge from it fully formed. Therefore, Khepri also represented creation and rebirth, and he was specifically connected with the rising sun and the mythical creation of the world. The Egyptian connected his name with the Egyptian language verb kheper, meaning "develop" or "come into being".[1]