Dung Beetles Navigate By the Milky Way; Pigeons Tune In To Magnetism 82
Posted
by
timothy
from the that-would-be-the-greatest-implant dept.
from the that-would-be-the-greatest-implant dept.
sciencehabit writes with this excerpt from Science magazine's colorful synopsis of a paywalled article at Current Biology "A day in the life of a male dung beetle goes something like this: Fly to a heap of dung, sculpt a clump of it into a large ball, then roll the ball away from the pile as fast as possible. However, it turns out that the beetles, who work at night, need some sort of compass to prevent them from rolling around in circles. New research suggests that the insects use starlight to guide their way. Birds, seals, and humans also use starlight to navigate, but this is the first time it's been shown in an insect." Also on the topic of How Animals Get Around Without GPS, new research has considerably heightened scientists understanding of birds' sensitivity to magnetic fields. For homing pigeons at least, this ability seems to be tied to a cluster of just 53 neurons (original paper, also behind a paywall).
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Dung Beetles move structures 1141 times their own weight. A skill much regarded by the pyramid builders.
The reinvention of wheel was much inspired by this tiny creature.
No so impressive (Score:5, Funny)
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Not to mention that once you get your shit together, you just gotta roll with it!
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Then what's your holdup?
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Funny thing, is they prolly think the same thing about you... they put what, where?....ewwwww!
Re:This is why I like science and nature (Score:4, Informative)
Dung beetles live in many different habitats, including desert, farmland, forest, and grasslands. They do not prefer extremely cold or dry weather. They are found on all continents except Antarctica.
Dung beetles eat dung excreted by herbivores and omnivores, and prefer that produced by the former. Many of them also feed on mushrooms and decaying leaves and fruits. One type living in Central America, Deltochilum valgum, is a carnivore preying upon millipedes. Those that eat dung do not need to eat or drink anything else, because the dung provides all the necessary nutrients.
Most dung beetles search for dung using their sensitive sense of smell. Some of the smaller species simply attach themselves to the dung-providers to wait for their reward. After capturing the dung, a dung beetle will roll it, following a straight line despite all obstacles. Sometimes dung beetles will try to steal the dung ball from another beetle, so the dung beetles have to move rapidly away from a dung pile once they have rolled their ball to prevent it from being stolen. Dung beetles can roll up to 10 times their weight. Male Onthophagus taurus beetles can pull 1,141 times their own body weight: the equivalent of an average person pulling six double-decker buses full of people. In 2003, researchers found one species of dung beetle (the African Scarabaeus zambesianus) navigates by using polarization patterns in moonlight. The discovery is the first proof any animal can use polarized moonlight for orientation. In 2013 a study was published revealing that dung beetles can navigate when only the Milky Way or clusters of bright stars are visible, the only animal known to orient themselves with the galaxy.
The "rollers" roll and bury a dung ball either for food storage or for making a brooding ball. In the latter case, two beetles, one male and one female, will be seen around the dung ball during the rolling process. Usually it is the male that rolls the ball, with the female hitch-hiking or simply following behind. In some cases the male and the female roll together. When a spot with soft soil is found, they stop and bury the dung ball. They will then mate underground. After the mating, both or one of them will prepare the brooding ball. When the ball is finished, the female lays eggs inside it, a form of mass provisioning. Some species do not leave after this stage, but remain to safeguard their offspring.
The dung beetle goes through a complete metamorphosis. The larvae live in brood balls made with dung prepared by their parents. During the larval stage, the beetle feeds on the dung surrounding it.
The behavior of the beetles was much misunderstood until the pioneering studies of Jean Henri Fabre. For example, Fabre corrected the myth that a dung beetle would seek aid from other dung beetles when confronted by obstacles. By painstaking observations and experiments, he found the seeming helpers were, in fact, robbers awaiting an opportunity to steal the roller's food source:
“I ask myself in vain what Proudhon introduced into Scarabaean morality the daring paradox that "property means plunder", or what diplomatist taught the Dung-beetle the savage maxim that "might is right".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dung_beetle [wikipedia.org]
Give me a ball of dung and a star to steer her by (Score:2)
Captain James T. Kirk quoted English poet Jonathan Masefield, "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." Scarab beetle celestial navigation was far beyond this with their, "All I ask is a ball of dung and a galaxy to steer he
Really? (Score:1)
Seems to me like the upper management method of running things has come into full swing.
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Dung Beetle's guide to the Galaxy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
An excerpt of a synopsis? Really? Is that what we're down to these days? Seems to me like the upper management method of running things has come into full swing.
Whenever I submit a story to /., it's a synopsis I found on google news, usually it's a straight copy/paste. That's usually what the editors here get and have to work with. I suppose that their job involves doing far more behind the scenes than, as /. viewers, we're privy to. Seems to me they do the best they can with what they get, and do clean up the sloppy story submissions they recieve.
Many's been the time that the /. eds research a story idea I submitted much further/deeper, providing a far more improved, informative story synopsis, entirely re-doing my submission over from scratch.
My hat gets doffed to the editors, they all do their best to keep improving this site. Samzepus, Soulskill, Timothy and the rest. For example, I have more respect and understanding of 'Timothy', who when I first started reading /., I assumed was some smartass techie kid, and who I'm guilty of goofing on a bit in some of my earliest posts (sorry 'bout those, Tim) . I learned that he's an intelligent man who knows a great deal about varied subjects. Live and learn.
The editors provide the content here, and it is up to the users of the site to expand on the provided story, and they almost always come through. I know I've expanded my world knowledge from reading this site over the last several years.
Slashdot editors are human too, and I don't think I'd want the job myself, and I've got a pretty thick skin. To have the whole world watching and critiquing my work (especially while I'm having a bad day anyway, the commenters can get really brutal here), no thanks!
Polarized Light also might be used (Score:5, Informative)
-- honeybees : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_navigation#Orientation_by_polarised_light [wikipedia.org]
-- squids eyes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye#Polarized_light [wikipedia.org]
-- fishies : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_in_fishes#Polarized_light [wikipedia.org]
.
Pigeons have been tested for polarization sensing and magnetic field sensing by William Tinsley Keeton [wikipedia.org].
Re:Polarized Light also might be used (Score:5, Interesting)
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The wikipedites also claim that the Olmecs might have beaten the chinese by a millennium, though! ;>p
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What's brown and sounds like a bell? (Score:1)
Dung! [google.com]
Re:This is why I love science. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe anything you read just because the person claims it to be a scientific fact, then that's your fault--not science. Don't just believe everyone you hear, that would be a good place to start.
If something cannot be successfully proven or is in fact proven to be bullshit, then it is discarded as such. That is what is good about science. It's also really weird when you grew up interested in astronomy being taught and passing tests in school of the "nine planets" and all of a sudden there's eight. Poor little Pluto. :(
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It's also really weird when you grew up interested in astronomy being taught and passing tests in school of the "nine planets" and all of a sudden there's eight. Poor little Pluto. :(
It wasn't all that sudden really. I too grew up learning about the nine planets.
But as our telescope technology improved, suddenly there was a 10th planet even larger than pluto, aka Eris or 2003 UB313.
Then an 11th, Ceres.
Then a 12th, Vesta.
Then Haumea, Astraea, Quaoar, and Makemake... and more that all changed names and classifications so frequently that it's hard to keep things straight.
Even the list above can't be considered in the correct order due to planets being discovered, then demoted, then promo
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I was being semi-sarcastic about being disappointed that Pluto was demoted; although serious that it was... bizarre, to say the least, that what I learned all along was wrong. To be honest, I always thought Pluto was a very boring object, certainly not as interesting as the gas giants, and didn't really fit in. But I remember reading about Eris and Makemake and whatever else, and thought, "whoopty do, another Pluto... boring." I actually didn't read much into it, but your explanation seems to paint the h
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The experiment was conducted both outdoors under the night sky, and inside a planetarium where researchers could manipulate the starlight and hone in on the specific cues that the dung beetles were using.
Better trolling next time.
Re:This is why I love science. (Score:5, Informative)
You dont have to be able to prove anything. You can just make up something and as long as it sounds good then youre a scientist. Hell you can be a good speaker and call yourself a scientist, if you can phrase and word things in a good way you can make up crazy stuff you have no idea about and people will believe you because there is no way to prove that youre wrong. And thats what a lot of "science" is, its saying something that sounds good while at the same not being able to be proved wrong.
"A dung beetle navigtes via the milky way" how you can you possibly prove that to be false?
Obviously you didn't get past the summary, or maybe even the title but what you claim is not science. Science is not spouting random things and waiting for someone else to prove you wrong. Go try that and you will have the credibility of the guy shouting that the end is near. Findings are whats published with procedures and methods used to reach those findings. Others interested can reproduce the experiment to try to get the same results to try to confirm those findings. If they can't reproduce the same results then the original finding must be declared false and reevaluated.
What you think of science is the result of journalists taking the findings and dumbing them down enough so people like you can understand a new fact.
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I assume that the fairly trivial "put some dung beetles in an enclosure covered with black paper and make your grad students poke holes matching the milky way and watch what happens" strategy didn't occur to you?
No, science is not infallible, particularly once human and institutional factors come into play; but falsifying hypotheses on animal navigation methods is hardly the most difficult challenge faced by the sciences. Want to fuck with an animal that you suspect of celestial navigation? Advanced 'planet
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http://www4.lu.se/o.o.i.s/32351 [www4.lu.se]
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I gotta do it (Score:1)
What's brown and sounds like a bell?
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...Dung! ..Dung! ....Dung!
Good science? (Score:1)
This sounds like shit science to me.
Re:I have a very amazing and interesting reponse . (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to Slashdot. Paywalls don't matter to us because reading the articles is frowned upon.
That doesn't stop us from bitching about them though.
Re:I have a very amazing and interesting reponse . (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/dung-beetle-astronomy/ [wired.com]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150721 [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212015072 [cell.com]
African dung beetles orient to the starry sky to move along straight paths The beetles do not orientate to the individual stars, but to the Milky Way Summary When the moon is absent from the night sky, stars remain as celestial visual cues. Nonetheless, only birds [1,2], seals [3], and humans [4] are known to use stars for orientation. African ball-rolling dung beetles exploit the sun, the moon, and the celestial polarization pattern to move along straight paths, away from the intense competition at the dung pile [5,6,7,8,9]. Even on clear moonless nights, many beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths [5]. This led us to hypothesize that dung beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation, a feat that has, to our knowledge, never been demonstrated in an insect. Here, we show that dung beetles transport their dung balls along straight paths under a starlit sky but lose this ability under overcast conditions. In a planetarium, the beetles orientate equally well when rolling under a full starlit sky as when only the Milky Way is present. The use of this bidirectional celestial cue for orientation has been proposed for vertebrates [10], spiders [11], and insects [5,12], but never proven. This finding represents the first convincing demonstration for the use of the starry sky for orientation in insects and provides the first documented use of the Milky Way for orientation in the animal kingdom.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212015072 [cell.com]
Re:I have a very amazing and interesting reponse . (Score:4, Informative)
Most, if not all authors, will be more than happy to send you the final copy of the manuscript if you email them, even if you aren't affiliated with a university or a researcher yet want still to learn about their work. In the case of old papers that can't be found on the Internet, which is common for some math journals that are no longer in print, I've found authors to be especially accommodating in sending hard copies.
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http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/ [lunduniversity.lu.se]
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If that's the case, you can grab the paper by Dacke, et al. from: https://mega.co.nz/#!ytIz2bpL!S2P0Nk4NigHmr4Y0keSURlNzNElroFnUzx23nqKG0js [mega.co.nz] and that of Wu and Dickman from: https://mega.co.nz/#!z5ohjYza!HZafDHCHTh8r1XcxKqOS6CuT4epGwK6PUh6ARCJbwd0 [mega.co.nz]
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In the understanding of god do we become god.
Even more amazing (Score:3)
...would be if the dung beetles could also navigate through the Galaxy.
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They do, just very short (in galactic terms) distances.
Huh? (Score:2)
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"Honestly I expected to find someone that made a compass out of a wrapper somewhere but alas the internet does not yet have everything."
It has lots. For example only old-school pigeons use their brain to navigate, modern ones just use the highways like us.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040210/full/news040209-1.html [nature.com]
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How do you use a candy bar to navigate?
Offer it to someone in return for directions?
What's the difference... (Score:3)
Between a dung beetle and a Congressman? The Dung Beetle has at least 53 neurons...
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The beetle's dung is on the outside.
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One is a dung munching, mindless, lower life form, and the other is a beetle?
From fusion to dung (Score:1)
Starlight? (Score:1)
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It's never cloudy in Africa.
Anyway, a study suggests... pfff. And even if someone could provide hard evidence, then what?
A part of the universe, in this case a beetle, acts as part of the universe, using the opportunities afforded it by its natural habitat, i.e., the universe.
Well I never.
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Research is about african dung beetles. Do you see them often near Seattle?
Dinosaurs (Score:2)
From the low to the high (Score:2)
It's gratifying that a humble creature that spends its days rolling dung about, can also reach for things on a cosmic scale.
The Lund University article... (Score:3)
While birds and people are known to navigate by the stars, the discovery is the first convincing evidence for such abilities in insects, the researchers say. It is also the first known example of any animal getting around by the Milky Way as opposed to the stars.
"Even on clear moonless nights, many dung beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths," said Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden. "This led us to suspect that the beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation – a feat that had, to our knowledge, never before been demonstrated in an insect."
Dacke and her colleagues found that dung beetles can transport their dung balls along straight paths under a starlit sky, but lose the ability under overcast conditions. In a planetarium, the beetles stayed on track equally well under a full starlit sky and one showing only the diffuse streak of the Milky Way.
That makes sense, the researchers explained, because the night sky is sprinkled with stars, but the vast majority of those stars should be too dim for the beetles' tiny compound eyes to see.
The findings raise the possibility that other nocturnal insects also use stars to guide them at night. On the other hand, dung beetles are pretty special. Upon locating a suitable dung pile, ball-rolling dung beetles shape a piece of dung into a ball and roll it away in a straight line. That behaviour guarantees them that they will not return to the dung pile, where they risk having their ball stolen by other beetles.
"Dung beetles are known to use celestial compass cues such as the sun, the moon and the pattern of polarised light formed around these light sources to roll their balls of dung along straight paths," Dacke said. "Celestial compass cues dominate straight-line orientation in dung beetles so strongly that, to our knowledge, this is the only animal with a visual compass system that ignores the extra orientation precision that landmarks can offer.
http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&news_item=5999 [lunduniversity.lu.se]
Top-notch work (Score:2)
One of the authors of the pigeon study was an invited speaker last summer at a conference I organize. I have not yet read the paper, but the presentation was arguably the best recieved of the 23 oral presentations, generating vigorous, positive discussion that spilled into after-hours interaction. Very, very good stuff.
While it may also be true that pigeons also navigate by polarized light, the evidence presented for a magnetic sense is overwhelming.
You'll use the planetarium for WHAT!?! (Score:2)
Scientist: "We'd like to use the planitarium for some exciting research! We'll need to bring in some beetles and some fresh elephant dun...."
Planitarium Curator: "No."
Scientist: "I can understand, but we'll make sure that..."
Curator: "No."
Scientist: "You didn't let me fin..."
Curator: "Get out.
Ted talk on navigation and heat management (Score:2)
Bit late to the party, but I think this is pretty old news; http://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung_beetle.html [ted.com]