These may be the smallest and fastest astronomers in the universe!
And my biggest fear is when the Google or Apple Map does not tell me to take the exit properly and the reroute adds another 3-4 km to the route!
What expletive comes out of many people’s mouth is what this astronomer is called!
They are the dung beetles! Now do not read dung and think only POOP but think large! Like say, Milky way!
These small creatures are nature’s sanitation crew. Whenever a pile of brown material is dumped in the forest, dung beetles converge to clean up the mess! Each beetle sculpts a dung ball, which they roll away in a straight line. Far from the pile, the ball will be buried and eaten, and sometimes used as bedding for dung beetle eggs! Now do not say yummy!
If you think no one fights for well, shit! You are wrong! The beetles are very protective about it and they will fight for their share of the shit…I mean dung!
So the best plan is to avoid a fight which leads to more loss of time and energy! See even they know what is good!
Dung beetles have therefore evolved the ability to navigate to safety in quick straight lines! Take your shit, deliver and that is that! Now that is a delivery which cannot be beaten!
During the day they steer by the sun. Dung beetles can see polarization patterns in the daytime sky, and use these patterns to hold course. A single patch of blue sky is sufficient. The trick works at night, too. Dung beetles are the only known creatures who can see the polarization of moonlight, which is 100 million times weaker than daylight polarization. Studies show that dung beetles can walk straight as accurately at night as during the day, even when the Moon is a faint crescent!
Now what about the very dark nights!? In 2009, entomologists made an astonishing discovery. Nocturnal dung beetles (Scarabaeus satyrus) can navigate using the Milky Way. Although the compound eyes of beetles cannot resolve individual stars, this species can see the Milky Way as a stripe across the sky and perhaps even sense features within it such as the galactic center and lanes of stardust.
The tiny insects can orient themselves to the bright stripe of light generated by our galaxy, and move in a line relative to it, according to experiments!
So the shit, I mean Dung Beetle can use the Milky way which is millions of…well quite far while we struggle with the Navigation inside the car!
Now just don’t laugh! Try to watch some comedy movies by Padma award winner Ashok Saraf!
Shubh ratri!
ramadocblog 