By the sun and the wind: Wits and Lund universities make major discovery about dung beetles

Dung beetles have a fall-back system of compass cues that they can switch between.Have you ever wondered why dung beetles don’t get lost, even when they navigate vast expanses backwards?

“This is the first study that shows how an animal’s biological compass can integrate different directional sensors — in this case the wind and the sun — in a flexible way. This enables the highest possible precision at all times,” says Dacke. Byrne says: “Choosing the most important job at any given moment is a task most computers struggle with, which we all know about from the frustration of attempting to send an e-mail while our machine checks its virus protection.”

“The insects' brains are definitely not preprogrammed to always follow the same set of actions. We can show that such small brains work according to dynamic principles that adapt to the conditions prevailing at a given moment,” says Dacke.

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