In every spring, billions of mites are filled with southeast Australia’s sky. They flee from low lands and try to overcome heat, fly about 600 miles to the caves included in the Australian Alps.
The mites appear from their larvae phase with the tools needed to take this trip, but no one knows how to move the 1 inch mites to the caves.
Scientists have previously found that mites could feel the magnetic field of the Earth with an internal compass. Now, they say they have broken the rest of the mystery. In a study published in the scientific magazine Nature on Wednesday, the researchers found that Bogong mites used the stellar sky as a guide to the caves.
“The big thing we discovered here is a very small animal like moth, with a very small nervous system, a very small mind, and very small eyes who are able to explain the sky of the night stars and work on the direction of flying.”
Many types of birds, in addition to humans, have proven that they can use stars to move in great distances. While the stars light of dung nodes use a few dozens of feet, no insect has been documented using the stars to travel.
Alpine landscape near Aestivation Caves. (Eric A note)
“The Bogong mission, we knew, is the first to be described to move with the stars,” said Andrea Aden, a post -doctoral researcher at the Francis Kreik Institute in London.
The researchers discovered the steady navigation capacity of mites by picking up the wild Bogong moths and then hanging animals on a thin tingstin rod at the interior in the small “flight simulation” in the form of a barrel.
With their appearance, they were glued to the penis, animals can flutter their wings inside the simulation and turn as if they were flying normally.
“It can rotate freely,” said David Drair, Lunder researcher, another study author. “He can choose any direction he wants to fly.”
The researchers invented a magnetic void to disrupt the internal magnetic compass of creatures and focus on their other senses.
At the top of the flight simulation, the researchers showed a picture of the night sky, which can be adjusted as they are pleased.
During the test, the researchers modified the rotation of the sky and found that the mites had turned their airline for compensation and set a new address. But when the researchers displayed a random and intense style of the sky in a flight simulation, they lost animals.
“The animals were completely prestigious,” Drair said. “It was, for us, like the final evidence, to some extent, they are already using mobility stars.”
In separate experiments, the researchers cut a small window into the mites brains, and inserted a glass tube into the neurons and the measurable electrical motivations where the drop off the stars was shown. The researchers found that the electrical impulses rose when specific angles were shown from the sky. The animals did not interact strongly when the researchers showed a random sky style.
A note said that Bogong Moth has young students, and they are likely to be only able to see a handful of the brightest stars in the sky. Researchers suspect that animals may use the Milky Way for Mobility.
“They may see the road to the Milky Way clearly and more east than we do,” said.
A note said that the mites are likely to use her sense of smell on her final approach to Alpine Caves.
He said: “They probably discover a boat that comes out of the cave – a smell compound that works as a kind of olfactory lighthouse that heads them to the cave,” adding that the smell resembles rotten meat.
The mission, which lives for about a year, spends a sleeping summer in the caves and then returns home to where they appeared.
Ken Lahman, a professor at the North Carolina University’s biology department, said she was convincing and that the experiences were studied and well monitored.
“One of the really wonderful things in this matter is the way the mites seem to be able to maintain this head over a long period of time and above huge distances using a relatively small brain,” said Lohamman, who studies animal mobility. “It highlights the ingenuity of natural selection.”
Atm Bogong was at risk and added to the International Federation to preserve the “red menu” of nature in 2021. The authors said the new results can help in revising this type.
“The number of mites has decreased dramatically in the numbers in recent years, especially with droughts and forest fires that Australia was in 2020,” Aden said. “Knowing that they use vision as part of the sensory arsenal they use to direct mobility may teach protection curricula in relation to optical pollution, for example, when mites are held in cities, for example.”
This article was originally published on NBCNEWS.com
