In the African Sahara desert, a tiny titan carefully rolls its huge ball of dung, which is about twice its size, across the sweltering sand. Meet the dung beetle...

The Dung beetle (Onthophagus) is a decomposer which means it recycles the waste of other animals in a way that benefits it and nature. They do this by laying their eggs in poop, eating poop, rolling a ball of poop halfway across the desert, and hoarding poop. They are extreme hoarders of this stuff. Adult Dung beetles lay their eggs in the ball, the eggs hatch into larvae, and if the ball with the larvae in it gets stolen the poop burglar rolls it away and eats the ball and larvae in the process! Poop is like gold to dung beetles...

In fact, anywhere there’s warmth and poop, these guys will be there. They live in Africa, South America, Asia, and the southern states of the US to name a few. The big four-inch dung beetles live in the Sahara desert. The native Egyptian people used to think that these beetles were sacred and that the sun god morphed into one at some point. The Egyptians made gold jewellery depicting these heavily armoured beetles.

If you would like to learn more about these tiny titans such as the directions in which they move their dung balls, dung territory, and many other interesting facts, watch this Ted talk that I found a while ago...

https://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung_beetle

Hope you enjoyed and learned from this week's post!

~Bradon (Bug Boy)

Written by Bradon Coy on 9/7/18