beetles of the caribbean

I have heard that sailors from ye olden days used the stars to navigate the world. In my head, all sailors from those days were also pirates. Because that's cool.

Therefore, anything that uses the stars to navigate is a pirate. Like the dung beetle. The PIRATE dung beetle!

Turns out they use the Milky Way to navigate their way around South Africa! People who study dung beetles (fun job) noticed that they use the moon and the sun to get directions. But what about those nights the moon is hiding? The Milky Way does the job!

They do a little dance to figure out where they are in the galaxy. The Milky Way is kinda like a dung disco ball for the beetles. Once they know where they need to go, they make a run for it! Dung beetles are very possessive of their dung balls.

Researchers grabbed a bunch of dung beetles and brought them to a planetarium. When they turned the Milky Way on, the beetles knew where to go. When they turned it off, they got lost and ended up in the Jupiter exhibit 2 floors down.

This was, literally, stinky for Jupiter. Since they now have to clean up dung balls not JUST in the planetarium room, but in the elevator and on Jupiter, too!

Of course, as pirates, the dung beetles were kind of ignored. Their "booty" (as pirates would say) was less a pile of gold and jewels and more a pile of dung.

They did have great galactic disco parties, though. Andromeda is totally jealous.

I'm off to disco under the Milky Way.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj