Meet the bug that uses the stars to navigate hundreds of miles
A new study reveals that an Australian butterfly follows the stars during its annual migration, using the night sky as a guiding compass. When temperatures warm up, the butterflies of Bogong Nocturnes run hundreds of kilometers to cool in caves by the Australian Alps. Butterflies are the first known invertebrates, or creatures without spine, to find their path through so long distances using the stars. Scientists put the butterflies in a flight simulator of the night sky and discovered that they counted on the night sky to say. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
