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Dung Beetles Navigate via the Milky Way
- ythn 9y agoWow, they put the beetles in a planetarium? Nice
- rexfuzzle 9y agoFor context: TED talk where navigation via the sun is discussed and shown- https://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung_beetle https://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung...
- samstave 9y ago"little cardboard hats" I never thought a dung beetle could sound so cute.
- komuW 9y agoI have found the link to the original paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.034 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.034
- olegkikin 9y agoBut how do they know it's not based on just a few bright stars? Milky way is pretty hard to see with our large human eyes. Insect eyes are good for panoramic views, but much less efficient at low light acuity.
- goodcanadian 9y agoFrom the article: To show that the beetles were focusing on the Milky Way, the team moved the table into the Johannesburg Planetarium, and found that the beetles could orient equally well under a full starlit sky as when only the Milky Way was present. If you are somewhere dark, the milky way is very easy to see . . . possibly the most obvious feature in the sky. It is just that light pollution makes it difficult to see from human-inhabited areas: a point which is actually raised in the article as a potential concern for animals that navigate by the night sky.
- olegkikin 9y agoYeah, but the bright stars are a part of the Milky Way. So that doesn't address my question. And I assume these beetles do just fine in light-polluted areas.
- goodcanadian 9y agoYeah, but the bright stars are a part of the Milky Way. So that doesn't address my question. I really think it does . . . in a planetarium, you can turn on or off whatever you want. In my experience, the milky way switch includes the background glow and not the bright foreground stars which are rendered separately. In these situations, I tend to give the researchers the benefit of the doubt; they generally aren't dumb people. And I assume these beetles do just fine in light-polluted areas. I make no such assumption, but even if true, it means that they are using other points of reference (like street lamps) in addition to or instead of the milky way when it is not available. That does not render the conclusion that they use the milky way as one of their references incorrect. Also, we do know that light pollution is a serious problem for some species. If there are bright lights above a beach, hatchling sea turtles will go the wrong way, heading inland instead of out to sea. Apparently, they evolved to head toward the relative brightness of the moon reflecting off the sea.
- idlewords 9y agoThe Milky Way in this context is the band of light visible on moonless nights, with no point sources. The article also addresses the question of light pollution.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- njharman 9y ago> Milky way is pretty hard to see with our large human eyes. It's not, at all. It's just become hard to see in the last 100 years or so of massive light pollution.
- sliverstorm 9y agoPiling on, a real dark-sky site is worth a visit. First one I've been too is the Cosmic Campground. I don't have my photos on hand, but it really looks like this to the naked eye, maybe even more vibrant: http://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CC_MilkyWay-700x366.png http://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CC_MilkyWa... (Be careful, at the CC we accidentally were "those guys"- there were no lights at all except red headlamps, and our car kept lighting up like a Christmas tree)
- nashashmi 9y agoI once used Google sky on my phone, and I learned what the milky way looks in my light polluted sky. It has become easy since then, but it becomes very difficult on days of full moon.
- vvanders 9y agoGet out away from the city. It's incredibly bright once dawn/dusk has subsided.
- macintux 9y agoI went to the darkest area within 2 hours (central Indiana) last weekend to watch the meteor shower. The Milky Way was not all that bright here. It's really hard to find true darkness east of the Mississippi.
- vermontdevil 9y agoSaw this in the twitter thread where this topic was started A dung beetle goes into a bar. He doesn't order a drink. He just takes a stool.
- joelrunyon 9y agoHere's the tweet thread that brought this to the forefront today - https://twitter.com/GeneticJen/status/897153736669356032 https://twitter.com/GeneticJen/status/897153736669356032
- pavlov 9y agoAncient Egyptians considered dung beetles sacred, and believed that they were responsible for rejuvenating the sun during the night. Egyptians also had a keen spiritual and scientific interest in astronomy. Now it's revealed that dung beetles can perceive the galaxy. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously dung beetles are descended from a race of astronavigators who taught the Egyptians everything. They are the ancient astronauts. [Cue theremin music]
- ChuckMcM 9y agoIt is often true that those that clean up the crap left by others are under appreciated :-)
- zoom6628 9y agoAnd they turn out to be more intelligent than those leaving the crap as well. :-)
- BartSaM 9y agoIs this Reddit now?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ue_ 9y agoAs it turns out, the only website found to have a sense of humour is Reddit. There are no other websites on the Internet on which humour is found in the wild /s
- bcbrown 9y agopavlov's account was created 3130 days ago; that's 8.5 years. BartSam's account was created 37 days ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- jrimbault 9y agoEveryone should read the guidelines really. >If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
- njharman 9y agoThis is less surprising if you imagine evolution to be a reinforcement machine learning system. The dung beetle actors are given all the sensory inputs of their environment. Those that used the inputs (which happened to be our galaxy) where better at satisfying goal and thus had higher selection rate for next iteration of system. The actors, much like machine leaning, AI, don't have any logic nor any reasoning. They simply are a ludicrously complex, but deterministic state machine of inputs -> mess -> outputs. The mess being seeming unintelligible, not rational, with lots of "cruft".
- Scaevolus 9y agoGene regulatory networks function much like neuronal networks, but with adaptability on the order of thousands of years instead of days.
- lioeters 9y agoI think that's a relevant metaphor, to look at evolution as a kind of machine learning system - especially the aspect of actors not "knowing" or understanding the logic/reasoning behind their (seemingly?) intelligent behavior. That might be a way to explain "intelligent design" in nature, without bringing God or consciousness into the narrative.
- nashashmi 9y ago> without bringing God or consciousness into the narrative. Are you that afraid of God? Honestly though, the more you break apart and put together the world through science, the stronger are the signs of a higher order. The more you take comfort in shallow explanations, the dimmer and darker your world becomes. Machine learning! Hah! It is nothing more than pattern recognition. Reactions to that pattern are a different thing entirely.
- stouset 9y agoAre you that desperate for a God that you recoil when scientists and mathematicians find a natural explanation for some phenomenon? The more you break apart the world through science, the more you realize that even the simplest of rulesets can give rise to an incredibly complex network of of structure, behavior, and incentives — no deity required. Enjoy your ever-shrinking God of the Gaps.
- mcone 9y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6422393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6422393
- lai 9y agoThat dung beetle helmet is hilarious.
- Moshe_Silnorin 9y agoWhat wonders we see in nature.
- zoom6628 9y agoDung beetles 1 Humans 0 There are so many things left to discover and understand on the planet. Great time to be a scientist, or a maker.