The dung beetle has many subspecies, but always the same function. It lives in all latitudes of the planet, except in the perpetual ice zones.
The dung beetle is a crucial beetle for areas where animals graze. They eliminate the masses of excrement and distribute them throughout the territory. In this way, they nourish the areas where they live with natural fertilizers, apart from feeding themselves (they are coprophagous), and also their young.
This and other dung beetle curiosities you will know about them if you finish reading this post on our site; some of them really incredible.
Fly
Dung beetles they fly very fast When they pass you close, it sounds like an old bomber passing you, such is the buzz they emit. I, who collected insects during my adolescence and for school reasons, paid a lot of attention to the behavior of dung beetles.
I didn't have access to meadows or places with cattle, so in these areas I don't know first-hand how dung beetles behave. However, I was able to verify the evolution of dung beetles on beaches that I could access.
It was probably because those beaches were frequently traveled by riders on their spirited horses, who stayed at ease between trots. Whenever a horse appeared in the distance, platoons of dung beetles would appear noisily flying out of nowhere.
Manure handling
Once the dung beetles have found their "treasure", they can proceed in a variety of ways. One of them is to form a sphere with a size that they can transport to their nest pushing the ball Once in their underground lair they join the newly transported ball to another formed mass by previous balls, where it will later deposit its eggs so that the heat of fermentation incubates them. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the fecal matter.
Sometimes transporting the ball (they push it), takes them many hours And the way they guide themselves to their nest is amazing. This mode of behavior is what I observed in beach dung beetles. There are other types of dung beetles that once they have formed the ball of dung, they dig a tunnel next to their sphere and bury the "ball", spawning right there.
Guided by the stars
There is a rigorous scientific study that proved that during the night the dung beetles that pushed their ball, were guided by the stars. It may seem like a joke, but several experiments were carried out and the truth of what was said was verified.
I didn't know this until recently, but on one occasion and during noon I observed a hard-working dung beetle that after transporting its ball through the beach sand, found the asph alt of the street in a housing estate. It crossed the road perpendicularly and suddenly bumped into the curb of a sidewalk. What happened next was fascinating.
The Watchtower Dung Beetle
Once the beetle hit the curb he tried to lift the big ball over the obstacle without success. After insisting a couple of times, he gave up and began to push the ball of manure along the stony profile of the curb for about a meter.
he Suddenly stood up, climbed onto the ball, and from above began to look in various directions, rotating his body on the ball. And I assure you that that beetle looked, because he put the tip of his front right leg (which would be equivalent to his hand), over his eyes to dim the light of the midday sun.
It reminded me of those old Western movies, in which the Indians, to look towards the horizon and improve their vision, put a hand on edge at the level of their eyebrows and better perceive the details they scrutinized. This done, the beetle dismounted from the ball and resumed its most determined march. Every half meter he stopped, climbed, looked in one direction with his "little hand" protecting his eyes, and after descending again he continued pushing determinedly.
I looked at that without understanding the reason for that so-human attitude that I had never observed in any other animal (with a human attitude I mean looking intently at the horizon while protecting yourself from glare, not pushing a big ball of manure). After traveling about three meters and after several stops the beetle stopped at a precise point on the curb wall, and that's when I really freaked out.
The dung beetle had stopped at a crack in the curb stone. This break in the edge of the sidewalk formed a kind of inclined ramp that ascended to the surface of the sidewalk. After stopping, the beetle took a couple of seconds of rest and began to push the ball through the fracture with great courage and confidence. In less than fifteen seconds he had brought up the huge ball that was sure to weigh several times more than him.
Then I realized that the beetle often took that path, depending on where the horse had defecated. And what the red-skinned dung beetle was looking at was the location of the damn ramp that allowed it to get over the high curb and go to his nest.
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