# s-behav: the beetle Carabaeus lamarcki, dancer and sky analyzer

<< beetles  use  the  light  of  the  Milky  Way  to  navigate  in  the  world >>

<< when  the  beetles  dance  on  top  of  a  ball  of dung,  they  simultaneously  take  a  photograph  -  a  snapshot  -  of  how  celestial  bodies  are  positioned. Then  they  know  where  they  are  going  and  roll  off  with  their  ball  of  dung  in  a  straight  line  across  the savannah >>

When dung beetles dance, they photograph the firmament. Lund  University, 12 May 2016.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=164092&CultureCode=en

<< This is a dung beetle (Carabaeus lamarcki) dancing on top of its ball while reading the sky >> image, caption.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160512125422.htm

Basil el Jundi, James J. Foster, et al. A  Snapshot-Based  Mechanism  for Celestial  Orientation. Current  Biology, 2016, in press.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.030

FonT: l'immagine della blatta sulla sua pallina di sterco che danza e contemporaneamente, attraverso la danza, fotografa la volta celeste per orientarsi e' davvero suggestiva, poetica; mi ricorda un'altra immagine:

<< ... trasformati in uno scarabeo stercorario gigante >>

di Salman Rushdie ("I romanzi e la vita [..] Il mito di Proteo". La Rep., 16/06/2006, pp. 48-9) dalla quale avevo composto una breve rima (quasistocastica):

2022 - si risvegliano stercorari
Saturday, June 17, 2006

http://inkpi.blogspot.it/2006/06/2022-si-risvegliano-stercorari.html