African Dung Beetle And Cardinal Fish - Two Magnificent High-tech Creatures
Two incredibly high-tech creatures that use two sophisticated natural navigational systems
As research now stands, both the dung beetle and the cardinalfish, are the first creatures on earth, that rely on the solar system and are also able to utilize the earth's magnetic fields as navigational tools.
There are countless wonders yet to be discovered on Earth and almost daily new and exciting natural wonders are brought to light. Just yesterday, a 60 million years old Tiranosaurusrex subspecies was discovered in Africa and who knows, what other wonders there still are, out there.
Researcher Marie Dacke, of Lund University in Sweden, said, her group needed to know how the African dung beetle is able to roll their dung balls in a perfectly straight line around early evening. So they conveyed the bugs to a planetarium.
While the modest African dung beetle, is best known for moving around dung balls, it now has a significantly more impressive distinction. It's the earliest known animal to utilize the Milky Way as its compass.
In the planetarium environment, they were able to randomly select from either a handful of the very brightest of stars to thousands of the dimmest stars or simply using only the Milky Way.
In fact, as it turned out, regardless of what they showed these beetles, from the entire starry sky to just the Milky Way, the beetles fared equally well. This was the final proof they needed, namely, that the African dung beetle does, in fact, use the Milky Way for their navigation.
Another equally amazing creature is the baby Cardinalfish, as when the sun sets, baby Cardinalfish knows precisely where home is. This is based on the grounds that they can feel the Earth's magnetic field.
New research has revealed that these creatures both possess an internal "compass" which can help them orientate regardless of whether or not there's sunlight or stars visible to guide them.
A professor Kingsford and his team had gathered Cardinalfish of approximately 10 millimeters in length from the Great Barrier Reef's One Tree Island, to try to discover how well these small fish could get their bearings in complete darkness and in the powerful magnetic environment of the reef itself.
Professor Kingsford discovered that the fish typically shifted their direction of travel, toward the southeast, however when his group moved the magnetic field 120 degrees clockwise, the fish all of a sudden altered their swimming course by all turning and swimming west, sure that they were still on track.
So, as research now stands, both the dung beetle and the cardinalfish, are the first creatures on earth, that rely on the solar system and are also able to utilize the earth's magnetic fields as navigational tools.
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