Friday, October 18, 2013

The Dung Beetle



I’ve always liked exploring the bizarre hard wiring of insects.  Their tiny brains have had millions of years to perfect survival in its most efficient and direct ways.  Non-individualistic and mechanical, their pattern of “eat and procreate” can be both mundane and beautiful.  That’s why, when I heard the news that dung beetles navigate by using the Milky Way Galaxy, there was no question that I had to paint it.


The poo pile--a competitive, thriving, and temporary ecosystem.  The creatures that depend on it are always in search, and willing to fight, for a share of steaming leftover nutrients.  And, mandible deep in shit, the Dung Beetle emerges as a creature beautifully evolved for the sole purpose of scavenging and transporting fresh feces.  


In a rush to escape the chaotic fight for food, they sculpt their ball of dung and roll it away with focus and accuracy, standing upside down and backwards and heading straight toward their den.  We now know that their four sets of eyes are watching both the ground and sky--sun in the day, and the rough glow of the Milky Way Galaxy at night--allowing them the ability to travel straight, with intention and precision.  Scientists tried manipulating their location, swiveling them around, and adjusting their surroundings, but it was only after putting the Dung Beetle in a planetarium and altering the fake night sky that the Milky Way was recognized as their compass.

Watch the awesome Dung Beetle Ted Talk here.

So, why should we be impressed?  No other animal that we know of uses the Milky Way specifically as its compass, but there are plenty of crazy animal navigation stories involving everything from magnetic fields to highly tuned memorization abilities.  The difference for me though, is that insects often get overlooked. 

Unfortunately, most of us have a hard time relating to alien exoskeletal mini-beings. If it's not cute and cuddly, it probably won't get much love from the general public.  So, in these occasional moments where we discover that an insect does something that seems loaded with intent and human-like rationale, we’re blown away.  Our own biases toward the stupidest things like "poop" and "beetles" are exposed and our eyes open to the vast spectrum of perfectly relatable and fascinating intelligence contained in all sizes of brains and in varying degrees of "cute" animals.

I'm guilty of the judgement, too. I don't think snakes are cute, I think kittens are cute. Therefore I care much more about kittens than snakes. But when you see a lack of funding or attention given to animals like snakes, sharks and spiders, or (maybe to a lesser degree) fish, frogs, and bees, you realize how harmful and pivotal these ridiculous discriminations can be.  If creating anthropomorphic view of an animal can mean the difference between extinction and survival, knowledge and dead air, then by all means go right ahead.

Maybe the Dung Beetle, with the galaxy reflecting on its wings and the earth moving tediously past, has not immediately given us life changing scientific answers through its navigational methods. But there are about 400,000 species of beetle in the world. If you allot equal importance to each of those 400,000, and were somehow given the funds, man-power and time study each bug, imagine the change in attitude from the resulting knowledge bank of bug facts. Imagine the respect and conservation efforts that could come from thinking of bugs like we think of mammals.  Different genus? Definitely. Less significant? No.


If only there were time to know each one personally.



Dung Beetle page from my notebook