Dung Beetles - This Is How They Roll

I’ll begin this article with a disclosure: I have a unique relationship with dung beetles.

It all started when I decided to write an educational children’s book about the dung beetle’s place in the eco system… I mean, really, what could be more popular with kids than a book with the word “poo” on every page? Thus began a year of research and a special affection for this persistent and assiduous little insect.

Let’s take a look at a the dung beetle, an insect I bet you didn’t know you needed.  In eco-systems world wide, with the exception of Antarctica, dung beetles can be found up to their necks in poo. Why is this important? Well, let me count the ways.

First and foremost dung beetles clean up the environment. These little sanitation workers can roll one metric ton of feces underground per year, and their average life-span is three years. Scientists say that without the dung beetle the entire earth would be covered in ten feet of poo, a fact that both delights and disgusts most children and adults alike.

Why is this important? When a dung beetle rolls his dung ball underground he’s aerating the soil and improving nutrient cycling.  This mitigates compaction and allows roots to take up nourishment much more easily. 

Next, by rolling approximated 250 times their own mass of poo underground per 24 hour period, they’re preventing all those tons of waste from running off into the water systems when it rains. Dung beetles have been known to virtually eliminate water pollution in entire eco systems with their diligent efforts. Speaking of water, their myriads of tunnels improve water filtration into the ground rather than having all the water fun off into ditches, streams, or rivers.

Many farms, ranches, and even gardens have difficulty with insect populations. By rolling feces underground this industrious beetle prevents insects from laying their eggs in the animal waste and help control the amount of flying insects as well as parasites from remaining in the environment. The original Orkin Man!

One of  the many hats the dung beetle wears is also that of a farmer! There’s seeds in that dung, and when it’s rolled  underground they replant the environments in which they live. They’re also fertilizing the soil with the dung at the same time!

The humble dung beetle has played many parts in human history. It was worshiped  as gods by the Egyptians, saved Australia from insect infestation, saved Hawaii from ecological disaster, and has been intricately entwined with humans throughout the world for over 3,000 years!

Here’s a few interesting facts about the dung beetle.

1. Some dung beetles can roll up to 1,000 times its own weight in dung. That’s like an average sized human lifting two fully-loaded eighteen-wheeler trucks. 
2. Dung beetles don’t actually eat feces. They suck the juice out of it like a poo slurpie, and they lay their eggs in it so their offspring have nutrition when they hatch.
3. They roll the dung with their back legs, upside down and backwards. Why? Because their back legs are stronger than their front legs. How do they find their way home?
4. Dung beetles are one of the few beings on earth that can navigate their way home by the position of the moon, sun, and/or stars to the horizon. How did scientist discover this? In a planetarium they constructed an enormous disk that could be rotated. After piling several feet of soil onto that disk, they added dung beetles. When the beetles had dug their prospective tunnels, they added feces. As the beetles began to roll it toward their tunnels the scientists rotated the disk by 25%. All the beetles stopped, got on top of the dung balls and looked up. Without fault they turned the proper direction and continued. This was repeated many times. Pretty incredible for an insect.
5. They can smell dung from a distance of five miles. 
6. In Africa their favorite dung is elephant dung. In the USA it’s a toss up between cattle and bison.
7. There are between 7,000 and 10,000 species of dung beetle around the world.

      8.    What is the favorite dung beetle joke among students? 

What is a dung beetle’s favorite super hero? Pooperman!

You can buy my book about Dung Beetles, entitled Steve The Dung Beetle here

References:

Michelle L. Thomas, NCAT Agriculture Intern, (2001)Updated by Omar Rodrigues, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist (2020)

Fascinating Facts: Dung Beetles

Wildark Originally posted on Chicago Council on Global Affairs (2018)

Martin Walters, The Illustrated World Encyclopedia Of Insects (2017),Lorenze Books, Amness Publishing Limited

DK Books, Everything You Need to Know About Bugs, (2015) 

Smithsonian, DK Children; Illustrated edition

Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World, (2019) Simon and Schuster

Marcus Byren, Helen Lunn, Dance of the Dung Beetles: Their role in our changing world, (2019) Wits University Press