Saturday, 14 May 2016

The 'ballet-dancing' beetles: Insects pirouette on balls of dung to take a 'snapshot' of stars and navigate the savannah

Researchers have found dung beetles dance on top of a ball of dung (pictured) while taking a 'photograph' of how celestial bodies are positioned
Oscar Wilde famously said 'we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars' - and this is particularly true of dung beetles. 
The creatures are known to navigate using the light of the Milky Way and now researchers have found they dance on top of a ball of dung while taking a 'photo' of how celestial bodies are aligned. 
The swift pirouette the balletic beetles perform enables them to know where they are going and roll off with their ball of dung in a straight line across the savannah.

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