The ability to follow stellar cues is far more common among animals than you might think. But experts warn this could be threatened by light pollution.
Astronomy is often called the world’s oldest science, and it’s likely humans have used their knowledge of the night sky to get from point A to point B since prehistoric times. But this ancient art predates us by far longer than that., and probably have as long as they've existed. In recent decades, researchers have discovered impressive navigation skills in various birds, in seals, even in a few insects — the latter of which have low-resolution compound eyes.
Why so many navigation options? Because redundancy pays. If you’re visiting a new city and your cell phone dies, Foster notes, “it’s good to have a map in your pocket. You never know when one method might fail you.” For birds, visual signals will obviously be of little help on an overcast day. And solar storms can interfere with the Earth’s magnetic field, rendering that sense useless. In either case, they need some backup options.
Borrowing from the ornithologists’ playbook, they built a one-of-a-kind floating planetarium. After the seals had spent some time under their makeshift dome, theya lodestar — or a star whose path they can use to steer while swimming — with “outstanding directional precision.
There are thousands of nocturnal animals, many with eyes adapted to the dim world they inhabit. And Foster notes that if they’re sensitive enough to see objects on the ground, they can certainly make the lights above, meaning they have at least the potential for stellar navigation.
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