1. Ants, flies, and insects in general move seemingly at random, but yesterday I learned there was an exception, viz. the scarab beetle. In the evening news it was told experiments had been done with such beetles and they rolled their balls of dung in front of them using directional cues not only from Sun in daytime but also from the band of the Milky Way in the night. They were therefore able to move in a very straight line, quickly reaching the hole in the ground which was their destinaton. Evolution must have eliminated individuals who strayed out of course, predators would have tended to get them before they had reached their holes.

When scarab beetles were outfitted with small sacks around their heads they went in circles (like vultures high in the sky or people lost in fog). Scarabs have 2 eyes on top for watching the skies and 2 eyes below to see the ground.

No wonder the ancient Egyptians had the scarab as a sign for Sun. Sun moves straight as a scarab beetle. Or as an arrow or as the crow flies.

"The head of Scarabaeus sacer has a distinctive array of six projections, resembling rays. The projections are uniform with four more projections on the each of the tibiae of the front legs, creating an arc of fourteen 'rays'. Functionally the projections are adaptations for digging and for shaping the ball of dung ...

When the female is ready to breed she selects especially fine-textured dung to make her breeding ball, and digs an especially deep and large chamber for it. There she sculpts it into a pear-shape with a hollow cavity in the narrow part. In that cavity she lays a single large egg. She then seals the cavity and departs to repeat the process elsewhere." (Wikipedia)

My main point is that the new research showing the ability of the scarab beetle to use signs in the sky to keep a straight course would have been equally easy to perform thousands of years ago. I believe we have much to rediscover which once was common knowledge.