Over the weekend I listened to a show about dung beetles on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.
(You might remember the dung beetle as a small insect that collects little balls of excrement, and then rolls them to it’s burrow……., for God knows what!)
The guy being interviewed said that these little nocturnal creatures always rolled there little balls in a perfectly straight line, and they did this by navigating by the stars!!!
This  immediately  caught my attention because I wondered how they found out beetles could use the stars for directions n the first place.
I mean, did they have the beetles clean up their little hands and then sign an avadavat, or what?
Well folks, it wasn’t quite that simple!
First they noticed that these little guys could not keep a straight line in cloudy weather, but rather rolled their little balls in circles and never got anywhere.
This got the scientists thinking that there might be some sort of navigation that was being used…., so they made little wee tiny cardboard hats for the beetles, that only allowed them to look ahead, and not up at the stars!
Same as a cloudy day kids, they rolled their little balls of crap in circles.
Next they put little wee tiny visors on the beetles that only let them look straight up at the milky way, but not ahead, AND GUESS WHAT?
They navigated a straight line again.
SO!
We now know that dung beetles use celestial navigation when they want to get their shit together!
Isn’t science great?