The other day , Uzzi and I were consist in the shadechewing cudwhen we glanced down and our eyes bugged out — there was a shiny black beetle crowd a grownup ball of manure with his back base . We got up and accompany him , and he went direct as an arrow across our paddock . Twice he stopped , climbed up on his manure ball and danced a gigue !
That night we crept into the house , booted up the computer and surfboard to an worm recognition site . The strange bug was a dung beetle , the tumbler form . And we discovered that dung beetles are cool !
There are more than 5,000 kind of dung beetles in the world and each lessen into one of three types : roller ( some people call them tumble bugs ) , tunnelers and dwellers . Rollers drift manure ( that ’s droppings , in case you do n’t have a go at it ) into orotund bollock and push them . ( They can campaign up to 10 times their system of weights . ) They apply their manure chunk as solid food storage or brood chambers . Tunnelers swallow manure wherever they find it , and dwellers merely last in manure .
All droppings mallet eat manure , and that makes them of import in our ecosystem . By burying manure , dung beetles loosen and meliorate soil social organisation while clear an area of surplus dung . Did you know that a unmarried cowpat can father 60 to 80 adulthorn fliesif protected from competitors , like droppings beetles ? However , as droppings beetles run , they compete with horn - fly larva for food and physically damage the horn tent flap ’ bollock . Our friends Aiah and Ludo make lots of moo-cow flop , and automobile horn flies bite ! well thing we have dung beetle on our farm .
There are big and short muck mallet , drift in size from 1/5 to 2½ inches long . They can be bootleg , brown or reddish , usually with a cool metallic sheen . Their front leg have serrate edges used for digging , and Male of some species have horns . They ’re take out to manure by odor . Once they find manure they like , they dine on its limpid contents . Dr. Patricia Richardson at the University of Texas calls this a “ dung slurpie ” .
W. Wyatt Hoback and Sean D. Whipple of University of Nebraska spent two class capturing more than 9,000 dung beetles of 15 coinage in pit trap baited with native and exotic manure to chance on what form they like well . They found that dung beetles prefer manure from omnivore — species that eat both kernel and plants — and that their favorites are human and chimpanzee manure .
A lot of people are passionate about muck beetles , like Emily Baird , of Lund University in Sweden , who contemplate dung beetles to figure out why roller stop and dance on their dung balls from time to time . She thinks it ’s to get their posture . She came to this ratiocination after placing bantam hats on dung beetles to immobilise their position of the sky . The chapeau - wearing beetles became disoriented and could n’t push their dung balls in straight lines .
Uzzi and I calculate at each other when we read that . Dung beetles wear down petite hats ! Next time we ’ll look closer when a droppings mallet rolls by . We do n’t intend our beetle was wearing one .
« More Mondays with Martok »
