The Bogong moths of Australia apparently use the Milky Way to help them navigate some thousand kilometers between northern and southern Australia twice a year. These moths are the first known invertebrates to use the stars to help them reach a destination they have never seen before.
As spring approaches in northern Australia locales, the temperatures climb and food sources for the moths dwindle. That sends them on their way roughly 1,000 kilometers (some 600 miles) to the cool caves in the Snowy mountains of southeastern Australia.
Neurobiologist David Dreyer of Sweden’s Lund University said, “When they arrive … they line up [on] the walls [and look] like the skin of a rattlesnake.” The moths lie dormant until the fall, when they return to the plains to mate and die.
Dreyer, neurobiologist Eric Warrant of Lund U. and their colleagues had previously said the moths use magnetic and visual signals to migrate but were unsure what the visual signals were. However, “one of the most obvious and stable cues is the stars,” says Warrant.
In their research Dreyer’s team captured Bogong moths while the insects were migrating and placed them into a circular arena that blocked the Earth’s magnetic field. Inside the lab they projected a realistic image of the night sky as it actually appeared at the time. Then they let the moths fly.
When the skies looked like the actual skies in spring, the moths flew southward as they would while flying to the caves. Then when the scientists made the skies look like they do in fall, the moths flew northward, as they would have in real life to return to their northern habitats.
The moth’s abilities might be compared to what a human must do in walking from New York City to Indianapolis with only the North Star as a compass. Warrant found it incredible that an insect has the “capacity to interpret the stars and read the Earth’s magnetic field in order to pick a specific direction to fly in. That’s a pretty phenomenal feat of navigation for an animal that has a brain a tenth the volume of a grain of rice.”
Comment: If the abilities of Bogong moths are impressive, what Monarch butterflies accomplish in North America might be even more impressive. Monarchs migrate up to 3,000 miles between summer homes in Canada and the northern U.S. and their winter homes in Mexico, Florida, and California. Like the moths, these butterflies arrive in places they have never seen before.
The return trip between south and north in spring is especially remarkable because it takes the butterflies several generations to complete the migration so that the butterflies that arrive in their northern homes are not the same butterflies that began the journey north.
Secular scientists are impressed. According to the U.S. Forest Service, “It is truly amazing that these monarchs know the way to the overwintering sites even though this migrating generation has never before been to Mexico!”
Can evolution theory explain the migrations of the moths and butterflies? Wouldn’t these insects have all died out before they evolved the knowledge of how to use environmental cues to help them complete their journeys? But God created them with the ability to use the stars, sun, and the magnetic field to travel without getting lost and to be able to correctly find their destinations despite the individual insects never having witnessed their future homes before.
Believers in Jesus Christ as their Savior are also looking forward to a sort of one-way migration. We have never seen our future heavenly home, and we can't find the destination by ourselves. But we have a guide who has been there. In fact, it is his home. Our guide is not natural cues such as stars or magnetism. It is Jesus.
“This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11b.
by Warren Krug
Reference: Erin Garcia de Jesús, “This moth species may use the Milky Way as its guiding star,” Science News [June 18, 2025]. [“Free to share and use” photo of a Bogong moth, from Microsoft Bing.]
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
What’s an easy way to improve your memory?
Socialize with your friends. A study found that adults who socialize often were 21% less likely to develop memory problems than people who didn’t. Socializing events included volunteering, religious services, dining out, visiting friends, and going to events.
Source: “Health Wire: The Memory Benefits of Seeing Friends,” Consumer Reports On Health [May, 2025], page 3.
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