The Dung Beetle

Published by 51m0nn in the blog Simon's Bug corner. Views: 493

*flies over gracefully and lands on a leaf*


Allo Allo Allo! How are my great friends this morning? Today I have a blog post specifically for Valkyria, as she requested it! TADAAA The Dung beetle!
Unfortunately Valkyria, I could not find this insect in my garden, they are found more in game reserves and game parks, where there is a lot of elephant dung to roll around. So, I shall do a blog post on a dung beetle of my choice!


Also, I must say you made a great choice Valkyria, the dung beetle is a most fascinating insect!


Allrighty! The Dung beetle is a medium sized stout beetle found all over the world, It is part of the Scarabaeidae family, or, Scarab beetle family, there are many other scarabs I could have chosen, but most are not even found near my area, this is the closes version of a typical Scarab that you will get here.
As I have mentioned before, Dung beetles roll the dung of herbivores or omnivores, (They prefer the former) into balls of dung, as you can imagine they also feed on the dung as well, because of this they do not need to eat or drink anything else because it is all given to them by the dung. (Delicious!) They live in deserts, grasslands, forests and farmland. (My city is in the thicket biome, hence the lack of them) You may be wondering why they roll their ball of dung around "Food maybe? but why not just eat it at the source?" They do this because, in the ball of dung is where they lay their eggs, the eggs hatch into larvae, and look at this, mommy has prepared for us an all we can eat buffet until we grow up! These insects are incredibly strong as well. They can move up to ten times their body weight in dung! Not to mention they move it bloody fast too, because if they don't, it may get stolen from them by another dung beetle. (Yo ho ho, and a ball of dung!) They move these dung balls in a straight line, and do not deviate from this path unless there is an impossibly large obstacle in their path.


There is another VERY VERY VERY interesting fact about these beetles!! They can NAVIGATE using the FREAKING MILKY WAY!!! and are the only animals on this earth to orient themselves using the stars! NOW THAT is AWESOME! There are many different species of this beetle as you can imagine, and I'm sure most of us know, that the scarab beetle is sacred in the Egyptian culture. The specific species, Scarabeus Sacar is the one that is sacred to these people.


Allrighty here are some pictures of dung beetles!


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This one is known as Scarabeus viettei, look at the odd shape of his head!


[video=youtube;3NTIHqE4GnU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NTIHqE4GnU[/video]


MAH DUNG! Here we see two dung beetles fighting over some dung, one is defending it's dung ball, and the their is trying to steal it!

[​IMG]

And lastly, here is a picture of the scarab in Egyptian paintings on a wall, the scarab represented their God of the sun "Khepri"

I hope you liked today's blog post! Especially ou Valky :3

If you have any questions, feel free to ask em in the comments, requests? No prob! Put em with the questions!

As for me, Simon out! *spreads brightly coloured wings and flies away*
Jan 25, 2013
  • Valkyyria
    Valkyyria Jan 25, 2013
    I loved this Blogpost! Not only did you do my request, but also your writing style is sooo great, i was smiling all the time while reading it! :3

    Also i have to say its very special that they use the stars o.รด I have really NEVER heared of something like that before..

    But i also have on question. on the first picture we can clearly see the legs of it. And they are somewhat.. uhm.. they look a little like a Saw to me. Does this have any purpose?
  • 51m0nn
    51m0nn Jan 25, 2013
    Yes actually, these serrated edges, and the shovel shape of the head are all used for digging purposes, These beetles are extremely useful to farmers, because by digging around through the manure, they fertilize the soil.

    Also, I mentioned they were strong, well the strongest dung beetle Onthophagus taurus Can pull a whopping 1 141 times their body weight!!! That's the equivalent of a human pulling 6 double decker buses full of people!!!!

    And I'm glad you are enjoying my blog posts! It's you and Lyon, and the occasional other commenter that keep this thing going, and I hope I can make them even more interesting with time!! ^^
  • Valkyyria
    Valkyyria Jan 27, 2013
    So i asume they use the digging legs to get their dungballs a little more save, so the larvae have a better start in life?

    1141 Times teihr own weight?! That is strong....

    I really do enjoy them a lot! I love biology and there is just a huge count of bugs, that will never be shown on TV r anything, that you can show to us much better, because you life in Africa! That makes it really special :)
  • Icy Skies
    Icy Skies Jun 14, 2014
    I used the stars navigation fact today in the store, a kid was buying a book on bugs and I told him the fact and he was like... Whoa cool!
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