Two things, it is said at the beginning of the 34. Chapter from Immanuel Kant’s “critique of practical reason”, would satisfy the mind with ever new reverence, the more you think about it: the starry heavens and the moral law we bear within us. But let’s assume that you would not be an enlightened man, but, for example, a dung beetle? How would the matter then?
Jörg Albrecht
Responsible for the departments “science” of the Frankfurt General Sunday newspaper.
F. A. Z.
The zoologist Marie Dacke of Lund University, has always been fascinated, as the representatives of the genus Scarabaeus, instead of balls, you roll out of the legacies of animals to rotate, the fastest way to get home. You, yourself, writes Dacke on your Homepage, I want one incredibly bad sense of direction, and therefore, discover the compass, probably an insect, whose brain is no bigger than a match head (www.biology.lu.se/marie-dacke). In your research you came across, among other things, the South African Scarabaeus satyrus, which is mainly at night. The beetle can already smell, if there is a bunch of Manure around, and come in droves. The crowd is large, often a competitor to the other, chasing a rolled ball again. Too many detours can not afford the scarab. In fact, he marched with his booty amazingly single-minded. This implies that it is based on anything.
What is guiding you?
it was The most obvious presumption that p. satyrus is aligned to the crowns of high trees or other land marks. To verify this, led by Marie Dacke ten years ago in a game reserve to the southwest of Johannesburg several Attempts. Under the open sky, they marked circles with a diameter of two meters, put the beetles and their Kotkugel in the middle, and recorded the routes they took. The subjects are not around dawdled long and took on average just 1.20 meters until they had reached the edge. The experimental field was then imposed, with black fabric panels, which bugs the Crap the view is perpendicular to the top enabled. The brought them by no means out of the concept. It was the moon, who showed them the way? No, in new moon nights, you might find your ideal. However, only in a starry sky. He was obscured by clouds, around eierten you erratic.
