Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Night-active dung beetles use the starry sky gradient to roll dung balls. The figure is taken from National Geographic, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

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Dung beetles navigate in straight lines using the Milky Way

Night-active dung beetles use the starry sky gradient to roll dung balls.

Dung beetles roll balls of animal droppings away from intense competition at manure piles as fast as possible. Researchers discovered that African dung beetles use the diffused light strip of the Milky Way galaxy as a celestial reference to roll in straight lines.

Dung beetle (Deltochilum mexicanum) 3 — Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 4.0 · licence · source

Where this comes from

National Geographic

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Tags: dung-beetle, insects, navigation

Dung beetles navigate in straight lines using the Milky Way: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Night-active dung beetles use the starry sky gradient to roll dung balls. The figure is taken from National Geographic, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a animals fact?: Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.