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The African dung beetle uses the moon to navigate

A straight line in the moonlight

Zohar Bar-Or

African zebras. No other animals are known to navigate using the moon

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The next time you go on a moonlight walk, try to find a dung beetle. If you succeed, try to see if she rolls the ball of feces she collected in a straight line.

According to a study published last week in the journal Nature, the African dung beetle (zambesianus Scarabaeus), a species of dung beetle, uses the light emitted by the moon (actually, the moon reflects the sunlight hitting it) to navigate.
The African dung beetle feeds on dung, mainly from elephants and cattle, and organic rotting material. She begins her search for fresh food near sunset. When she locates a food source, she pounces on it and forms a ball out of it with her front legs and head.

At this point, navigating in a straight line is an existential need for Zivalit. Between the beetles there is fierce competition for food, so as soon as one of them has created a ball of dung, she hurries away with it. The preferred path is a straight line, as it is the shortest way to get away from other beetles.

"It is important that they move in a straight line. If they don't do this, they run the risk of other beetles stealing the dung balls from them," said Marie Dakka from Lund University in Sweden, who headed the research team, which was done jointly with researchers from South Africa.

It is known that many species - including birds, bees and ants - use sunlight to navigate in space. The African shrew is the first animal found to use the light of the moon - almost a million times weaker than the light of the sun - as a compass.

When sunlight reaches the Earth from space, it hits tiny particles in the atmosphere and as a result is scattered in a certain way, depending on the conditions prevailing at the time. Different species of animals use the dispersion patterns (polarization) of light as a kind of reference planes, compared to which they can maintain a constant direction of movement.

At twilight, when the sedge goes out in search of food, it relies on the polarization pattern of the setting sun's light. But Dhaka and her partners found that the beetle manages to walk in a straight line even at night, provided the moon is shining. On dark or cloudy nights, the beetles followed less straight paths.

To test whether the beetles actually utilize the polarization pattern of the moonlight, rather than its position in the sky, the researchers initially hid the moon from the beetles. Then put a polarizing filter (Polaroid) over them, while they roll the ball of feces. A polarizer is a device that allows light with a certain polarization, and only with that polarization, to pass through it; In addition, the device allows you to change the polarization of the light. The polarizer placed above the beetles shifted the polarization of the moonlight by 90 degrees.

After activating the polarizer, the beetles did make random turns of about 90 degrees, right or left, and continued to move in a straight line. According to the researchers, this proves that the African cicada uses the moonlight to maintain a straight path. However, the moonlight does not help Zibilit distinguish between right and left.

The African hyena may not be the only nocturnal animal that uses moonlight to navigate. "It may turn out that in the animal kingdom this ability is widespread," said Dhaka.

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