With a brain smaller than a 10th of a grain of rice, bogong moths are born with exceptional navigation skills. Scientists are starting to understand how.
abc.net.au/news/bogong-moth-navigation-mystery-research/102367702Each year, bogong moths make an extraordinary journey over 1,000 kilometres from their breeding grounds in south-eastern Australia, to spend the spring and summer in high-altitude caves in the Snowy Mountains.
In a purpose-built lab in Adaminaby in the NSW Snowy Mountains, Professor Warrant shows how he can insert a tiny electrode, measuring one thousandth of a millimetre at the tip, into an individual nerve cell in the moth's brain. The project has involved researchers from Australia, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Canada and China, and is based in Lund University in Sweden, where Warrant is Professor of Zoology.
Scientists are mapping which parts of a bogong moth's brain detect the stars and the earth's magnetic field. "You might not even see them at first, they line the walls kind of like roof tiles, each one's head tucked under the wings of another moth, so they look like the granite they are sitting on," Dr Honkanen said.
The researchers walked into alpine caves where 17,000 moths once crowded onto every square metre of cave wall, to find there were suddenly no moths at all.
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