Tue January 29, 2013 Swiss Scientists Discover Dung Beetles Use
The Milky Way For GPS Originally published on Mon February 4,
2013 1:29 pm MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL
THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: And
I'm Audie Cornish. And we have a story now about celestial
navigation - that is, looking to the sky for guidance. BLOCK:
But before we get too lofty, this story also happens to be about
dung beetles. And so we start with this lowly central unpleasant
fact about dung beetles. ERIC WARRANT: Dung beetles and their
grubs eat dung and everything about dung beetles has to do with
dung in some form. BLOCK: That's professor Eric Warrant. He's an
Australian professor of zoology teaching at the University of
Lund in Sweden. CORNISH: Five years ago, he and a group of other
scientists began studying the remarkable navigational skills of
dung beetles. These insects harvest material from a fresh pile
of feces in the desert. They shape their bounty into a sphere
and roll it away