Flight simulator for moths reveals they navigate by starlight
Nature Podcast
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4.4 • 859 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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In this episode:
00:45 The tiny moths that use the stars to navigate
Bogong moths use the stars to help them navigate during their enormous migration across Australia, according to new research. Every year, billions of these nocturnal moths travel up to 1,000 km to cool caves in the Australian Alps, despite having never been there before. By placing moths in a flight-simulator that also acted as a planetarium, the team behind the work showed that moths could use the bright Milky Way to help them fly in the correct direction.
Research article: Dreyer et al.
10:17 Research Highlights
Nigeria's pangolins are under threat because their meat is delicious, and how the gravitational pull of other galaxies may prevent the Milky Way colliding with Andromeda.
Research Highlight: Why pangolins are poached: they’re the tastiest animal around
Research Highlight: A long-predicted cosmic collision might not happen after all
12:37 How humans expanded their habitats before migrating out of Africa
New research suggests that shortly before modern humans successfully migrated out of Africa, they massively expanded the range of ecosystems they lived in. By combining climate modelling with data from archaeological sites across the African continent, researchers put forward evidence that 70,000 years ago, humans expanded the ecosystems they lived in to include diverse habitat types from forests to deserts. The authors suggest this ability to live in different places may have helped the later humans that migrated out of the continent around 50,000 years ago.
Research article: Hallet et al.
21:59 Briefing Chat
Blowing bubble-rings could be humpback whales' way of trying to communicate with humans, and the research suggesting that everyone’s breathing pattern is unique.
Science Alert: Humpback Whale Bubble Rings May Be an Attempt to Communicate With Us
Nature: How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify you
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | nature in an experiment i have no yet why is it like so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea |
| 0:10.7 | but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature Nature Welcome back to the nature |
| 0:25.6 | podcast. This week, the muffs that are guided by the stars |
| 0:29.9 | and how human populations expanded into new ecosystems 70,000 years ago. |
| 0:36.7 | I'm Benjamin Thompson and I'm Nick Petichal. |
| 0:45.6 | Bogong moths can use the stars to navigate, according to a new study in nature. |
| 0:52.2 | Few animals are known to use the stars to find their way. |
| 0:55.5 | Humans, famously, have used them throughout history, |
| 0:58.5 | and some migratory birds are thought to be able to. |
| 1:02.7 | Other than that, the list isn't very long, as far as we know. |
| 1:06.8 | When it comes to insects, only dung beetles are thought to use the stars to navigate, |
| 1:12.6 | but even then, only over short distances. |
| 1:16.6 | Bogong moths, though, are insects that travel great distances. |
| 1:21.3 | Each year, an enormous number of these moths migrate across Australia |
| 1:25.6 | to a very specific location that they've never been to, |
| 1:29.8 | and later they make the return journey. Clearly, being able to find their way is of great |
| 1:35.4 | importance to these insects. Evidence suggests that Bogong moths use the Earth's magnetic field |
| 1:42.8 | to help them find their way. But now the new study |
| 1:46.3 | shows that they have another tool in their navigatory arsenal, the Milky Way. I caught up with |
| 1:52.9 | study author Eric Warrant to find my way through the study. I started by asking him to tell me |
| 1:59.3 | a bit more about these curious moths. |
| 2:01.9 | They're a very nondescript little moth that doesn't look much different than any other brown moth most people are kind of aware of, |
... |
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