Ancient Beliefs

• In Ancient Egypt dung beetles, or scarabs, were worshiped.
• Egyptians believed that the scarab was a god that rolled the sun across the sky and buried it each evening.
• The sun emerged the next morning born anew.

Dung Beetle Facts

• Insects part of the Scarabaeoidea family.
• Feed partly or entirely on feces.
• 3 dung beetle types: rollers (roll balls), tunnelers (bury dung where they find it) and dwellers (live in manure).
• Possess super powerful front legs that can roll up to 50 times their own weight!
• Have been around for over 50 million years.
• There are over 7000 dung beetle species worldwide.

Dung Balls?

• Dung beetles remove dung from cows/wild animals and form dung balls.
• They have a very funny way of carrying around their “treasured prize”: heads down and bottoms up!
• Dung balls are the centerpiece of their new homes.
• Once they’ve picked the right spot, the beetles dig a hole to burry the ball.
• The female then lays her eggs in the new burrow.
• When the eggs hatch, they feed on the dung and renew the whole cycle.

Vital Function

• The abundance of dung beetles can be correlated with the abundance of flies. In other words, more dung beetles = less flies.
• The recycling of the dung aerates the soil and the nutrients in the dung ball nourish the Earth.
• Ultimately, this improves the nutrient cycle, betters the soil structure and encourages forage growth.

Just for Fun

Enjoy this fun dung beetle video by Rich Laburn (thanks man, you’re a champ ). And take a good look at the animal’s technique to know where it’s going…it rolls its ball, stops and climbs to the top to check its surroundings!

Tags: dung balls, dung beetle, dung beetle facts

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 1:12 am and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed or trackback from your own site.