One kind of Australian moth looks to the stars on its voyage to a summertime refuge.

Stellar cues from the Milky Way’s bright band may help Bogong moths (Agrotis infusa) chart a path from the sizzling plains of southeastern Australia to cool caves in the country’s Snowy Mountains, researchers report June 18 in Nature. While people, some birds and possibly seals rely on the night sky to navigate, Bogong moths are the first known invertebrates to reach a destination they’ve never seen before with help from the stars.

In spring, mounting temperatures and dwindling food sources send the moths roughly 1,000 kilometers south toward the caves, says David Dreyer, a neurobiologist at the Lund University in Sweden. “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.