A moving landmark
Using the Sun
If the Sun is a clock and a compass, who is reading it?
Generated interpretation
First look
The Sun is easy to notice and hard to use. It moves.
An animal that orients by the Sun needs a sense of time, or the heading will drift.
Look closer
Desert ants and honeybees are masters of this. Bees even dance the Sun's angle in the dark of the hive.
Polarized light in blue sky lets some insects keep the solar compass when the Sun itself is hidden.
Keep looking
A time-compensated Sun compass is a clock plus a heading. Remove the clock, and morning and afternoon disagree.
When the Sun is hidden, scattering in blue sky still makes a pattern of polarized light, strongest about a right angle from the Sun. Some insects can read it. Do not look at the Sun to find it.
Where else
Honeybees, Desert ants, Some birds, Monarch butterflies.
Stories that use this
A question to carry outside
Where is the Sun right now, without looking at a phone?