Data from: How animals follow the stars

Throughout history, the stars have provided humans with ever more
information about our world, enabling increasingly accurate systems of
navigation in addition to fuelling some of the greatest scientific
controversies. What information animals have evolved to extract from a
starry sky and how they do so, is a topic of study that combines the
practical and theoretical challenges faced by both astronomers and field
biologists. While a number of animal species have been demonstrated to use
the stars as a source of directional information, the strategies that
these animals use to convert this complex and variable pattern of dim
light-points into a reliable “stellar orientation” cue have been more
difficult to ascertain. In this review, we assess the stars as a visual
stimulus that conveys directional information, and compare the bodies of
evidence available for the different stellar orientation strategies
proposed to date. In this context, we also introduce new technologies that
may aid in the study of stellar orientation, and suggest how field
experiments may be used to characterise the mechanisms underlying stellar
orientation.