12/24/2023 0 Comments Mountain of the moon savannaOnce the beetles are a safe distance from the pile, they burrow into the ground and feast on their nugget for days. "There are so many beetles at the dung pile going after limited food, so they want to escape from the competition," she said. To gain an edge in this battle for the poop, the African dung beetle Scarabaeus zambesianus orients itself by the polarized light pattern cast by the moon to make a straight, nighttime escape with its morsel, according to Marie Dacke, a biologist at the University of Lund in Sweden. The spoils go to those with the craftiest strategies to snatch and stash a piece of the pie. Out on the African savanna, a fresh and moist pile of fine-grained antelope dung is a nutritious treasure aggressively fought over by a melee of critters.
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