Birds, seals and humans can find their way by the stars — as, it seems, can the dung beetle, using the Milky Way.

Credit: M. BYRNE

Marie Dacke at Lund University in Sweden and her colleagues timed how long the nocturnal dung beetles (Scarabaeus satyrus; pictured) took to roll their dung balls from the centre of an outdoor arena to its edge. When beetles could see the starlit sky they took less time, and followed straighter paths, than beetles that either had their upward-facing eyes covered or had to navigate on an overcast night. The authors moved their arena into a planetarium, and found that dung beetles exposed to a full starry sky took the same amount of time to exit the arena as those that could see just the Milky Way.

This is the first evidence of an insect navigating using the Milky Way, but it may not be the only animal with this capability, the authors say.

Curr. Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.034 (2013)