Nature Podcast18 Jun 2025

Flight simulator for moths reveals they navigate by starlight

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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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