Take, for instance, the dung beetle.
I remember seeing one in the pasture on my grandparents’ farm. He was rolling, rolling, rolling! The common name for the insect is dung beetle, but growing up in the South, we kids called them tumble bugs. They are members of the scarab beetle family. Yes, ladies, those were stones shaped like dung beetles in your pretty, multi-colored scarab bracelets that were in fashion years ago. I wore one of the bracelets in college.
Egyptians worshiped scarab beetles. They believed the insect represented a god moving the Sun.
I’ve done some research on these little critters. Yes, really, I did research on dung beetles. That’s what I do if I intend to have a dung beetle in my next novel with all the other critters I will describe. So I did what many high school and college students do: I went straight to Wikipedia.
There are three kinds of dung beetles: tunnelers, rollers, and dwellers.
Tunnelers bury the dung wherever they find it. They dig tunnels to hide their treasure. Rollers roll dung into a round ball to be used for food and breeding. Dwellers call it a day and enjoy their new home. Researchers say the beetles have a keen sense of smell. Who knew?
Intrigued, I needed to know more, so I turned to National Geographic.
It’s beetle-mania out there in pastures, with occasional fights breaking out over the merchandise. Males create a ball of dung and roll it away in a hurry from the other ecstatic beetles, aka “potential thieves.” Often as a male is rolling the ball away, he picks up a female along the way and carries her while he’s rolling. Together they bury the dung and start a family. That gives new meaning to eloping and setting up housekeeping. And multi-tasking.
The beetles are filled with delight when they find fresh dung, but they are afraid someone else will steal their bounty. They must work fast to avoid theft of their prized possession. And dung beetles navigate fairly fast unless they’re wearing hats.
But in order to get away from the other beetles in a hurry, the tumble bugs have to move in a straight line, not wander in circles. How do they do that?
Researchers conducted an experiment. They put little hats on a few dung beetles so their eyes were covered. (Cue: I would have loved to see the little hats—and the researcher putting the hats on the tumble bugs’ heads.) The little critters wandered aimlessly when their eyes were covered, but once the researchers removed the hats, the dung beetles were good to go.
But here’s where things get really interesting. The researchers made an astonishing discovery: The humble little poop rollers have a piece of high-tech equipment on board. They don’t just wander around to find any old spot to enjoy their treasure. They navigate according to the Milky Way. They follow the light from the stars!
I can’t do that! Can you?
Home, sweet home! What’s for dinner? Yum! Well, that’s not all. The ball of dung fills many needs: a place to lay eggs, a place to live, food to eat, (exercise?).
All critters have that certain something which makes them unique. In the case of dung beetles, in addition to their out-of-this-world navigational ability, they don’t harm anyone and they truly live off the land—or pasture, making the soil more fertile.
Hats off to tumble bugs!
If you want to learn more about dung beetles and see them wearing hats (You know you do!), you can check out this website:
A “hairy coo” in Scotland (May 2019)
