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No stage fright?

- Stephen Fry, stage fright and how to avoid it, Guardian.co.uk, September 21, 2017.

3. Marcus Byrne, a zoologist at University of Witwatersrand, and another co-author on the paper, said: “The Milky Way is a great big signal of light across the middle of the sky.” Byrne was speaking from the group’s field site on the edge of the Kalahari, some three hundred miles from Johannesburg; he and Dacke are there for two weeks, studying dung beetles around the clock. (“It’s one of those crazy pack-it-all-in-and-fall-over-at-the-end-of it situations,” he said.) In the evenings, after long days of watching beetles orient to the sun and moon, the researchers would eat and drink and watch the Milky Way emerge. “We’d look up and say, ‘How beautiful!’” Byrne said. “It’s corny, but it’s a highway in the sky, a great big pathway: the Milky Way. We figured, if we can see it, they can see it.”

To test they idea, they built a circular, wooden table several feet in diameter, with a moat around the edge to catch beetles when they fell off. A high wall around the perimeter, lined with black cloth, blocked the view of trees and other potential landmarks. One by one, a beetle and his dung ball would be placed in the middle of the arena and timed to see how long it took him to reach the edge. This was all done in the dark. “They were completely unobserved,” Byrne said. “It was pretty weird. We’d release them, then you’d hear their footsteps pattering across the woodwork, then they’d fall into the trough with a thump.”