First non-human animal to navigate via the Milky Way

The first non-human animal species currently known to navigate and orient itself by using the Milky Way is the nocturnal African dung beetle Scarabaeus satyrus, native to South Africa. In 2013, a team of scientists from South Africa and Sweden published the results of their study of navigation in this species, a member of the scarab beetle genus, which revealed that these dung beetles use the gradient of light to dark provided by the Milky Way on cloudless moonless nights to ensure that they keep rolling their balls of dung in a straight line and don't circle back to competitors at the dung pile. A few other animals have been proven to use stars for orientation, but this dung beetle species is the first animal proven to use the entire galaxy for this purpose.

Previously, it had been shown that a related species, the Zambezi scarab beetle Scarabaeus zambesianus, can navigate using the polarisation patterns present in moonlight. Once again, this was the first animal species known to be able to accomplish this navigational feat.