"The Dung Beetle (Scarabaeinae) is among the continent's most industrious insects and, in the author's view, among its most underestimated. It shapes, rolls and transports a ball of dung many times its own body weight with a single-minded efficiency that the author finds, on reflection, instructive. Its contribution to the ecosystem — nutrient cycling, soil aeration, the reduction of parasites — is fundamental and largely invisible to the casual observer. The ancient Egyptians observed its rolling behaviour and elevated the scarab to the sacred, connecting it to the sun god Ra and the passage of the sun across the sky. They were, the author has always considered, rather astute observers of the natural world."
The beetle came through the firelight at half past nine, rolling its ball with the absorbed purposefulness of something that has assessed the available landscape and identified a destination. It did not deviate. It crossed the cleared ground in front of the fire, navigated a small irregularity in the earth without breaking pace, and continued into the dark on the other side as though the campfire, the camp chairs, the Colonel and Cetshwayo were all simply features of a route to be noted and passed.
The Colonel watched it go. He had always found them interesting. There was something satisfying about the beetle's commitment — the ball three times its own diameter, the rolling relentless, the direction maintained against all reasonable expectation.
"The Egyptians made them sacred," he said.
Cetshwayo said nothing. He had heard this before.
"Ra," the Colonel said. "The scarab rolling the sun across the sky. They watched exactly this" — he indicated the direction the beetle had gone — "and made it divine. Which suggests they were paying attention."
He poured his medication. The fire settled.
The letter had arrived that morning with a paper enclosed — from a colleague at the Royal Geographical Society, a man the Colonel respected, which made the relevant passage more difficult to dismiss than he would have preferred.
He read it again.
The African dung beetle, the paper stated, navigates at night by the light of the Milky Way. Not by individual stars. By the diffuse band of the galaxy itself — the collective light of billions of distant suns, used as a bearing to roll a ball of dung in a straight line away from competitors.
The Colonel set the paper down.
He picked it up.
He set it down again with the deliberate care of a man managing his response.
"It says," he said to Cetshwayo, who had the advantage of understanding nothing and therefore made an ideal audience for what followed, "that the dung beetle navigates. By the Milky Way."
He indicated the sky, where the Milky Way was, in point of fact, currently visible.
"The galaxy," he said. "The entire galaxy. Used by a beetle. To roll dung."