It Takes Big Balls

And behold! The lowly dung beetle. These some 5,000 species are members of the ironically classified superfamily Scarabaeoidea, and are united in their singular love of poo. While insects are noted particularly for their indefatigable pragmatism in feasting upon every putrid, corrupt, desiccated and decaying scrap of the misfortune of life on Earth, the dung beetle makes a virtue of the ultimate necessity. Using feces as a source of nutrition, a nursery or even as an entire residence, this is one insect that clearly knows its shit. Dung beetles are found all over the world in a variety of habitats and are native to every continent with the exception of Antarctica, where one might speculate there is some pretty c-cold caca. The beetle’s signature move is forming a portion of a dung pile into a nice round ball and rolling it in a seemingly straight line until it arrives at wherever it is that a beetle would take such a thing.

Dung beetles are notorious thieves and lazy interlopers will often lurk around the perimeter of the dung source and attempt to liberate the work products of their more industrious neighbors. Mating pairs will often collaborate on removing the dung ball, although entomologists observe that the female more often simply follows behind the male rather than actually assisting in moving the dung, perhaps taking the opportunity to convey to the male advice on how to perfect the effort. Generally no more than one to two inches in length, dung beetles are prodigiously strong, moving up to 50 times their own weight. The ball itself is ultimately buried to serve as a refuge and food source for the developing larvae or as a food cache for the adult beetles. There is a single species of dung beetle residing in South America that is not a fan of dung, preying principally on millipedes. One cannot help but wonder if they simply tired of having to eat shit all the time.

Al Gore would be proud of the environmental consciousness of the hardy dung beetle. With their specially designed digging legs, the beetles remove, distribute and bury enormous volumes of dung, playing a key roll in renourishing the soil, and their efforts prevent the accumulation of large amounts of dung which might serve as a breeding ground for pests like biting flies. Because modern ranching methods concentrate animals in restricted ranges, the beetles aid ranchers in the Herculean task of removing manure, so much so that it is estimated they save livestock producers hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and all they ask in return is a tasty little turd of their own. Actually, it is somewhat inaccurate to say that the dung beetles eat dung; they really just suck on it. Because the moisture in the dung is rich in nutrients and tasty micro-organisms, the beetles suck the juice out, leaving behind fiber and other vegetative matter. The dung is such a complete snack that the adult beetles eat and drink nothing else. The growing larvae consume the solid elements of the dung ball, which are usually more than adequate for their needs, leaving behind precious dung to enrich the soil and provide a medium for the growth of numerous micro-organisms.

The love life of the dung beetle is about as shitty as that of most humans. The male grows a large horn which he uses to threaten and combat other males for the right to mate with a female whom he has attracted with his large ball of dung. They run off together and mate in, and around, the dung ball, which then becomes home to their hungry offspring. The kids eat up all their shit and then leave, without so much as a thank you. Since dung beetles typically live anywhere from three to five years, they may repeat this humiliating process several times in their lives. Once the dung ball is used up, the female leaves and looks for another sucker. Go figure.

The scarab beetle that was once so revered by the ancient Egyptians is a prominent member of the dung beetle family. What the Egyptians found so note-worthy about the beetle is difficult to say, although it was associated with Khepri, the god of the rising sun. The image of the scarab beetle was related to the concepts of death and rebirth and renewal and transformation and was a key element of funerary symbology. Many pharaohs were buried with a dung beetle carved from precious stones placed upon their chests near where their hearts had recently been. Dung beetles even rushed out of the subterranean crypts to attack Brendan Fraser and Rachael Wiesz in 1999’s The Mummy. That was, however, given the harmless nature of the dung beetle, just a bunch of shit.

The dung beetle is pretty much a blue collar sort of a guy. It does the dirty work that needs to be done and never complains. It accepts its place in the scheme of things and makes the best of its situation, but there is more to the story than the pedestrian pathos of a life filled with shit; despite its uncomplicated nature, the dung beetle is not so different from us. It rolls its ball of dung like a miniature Sisyphus with the dedication of an obsessive-compulsive IRS agent. It places love and family above comfort and convenience and isn’t afraid to fight when its rights are challenged. It knows the value of having lots of shit and may even take somebody else’s shit if the opportunity arises. But more than anything, the dung beetle seeks to craft order from the chaos of life; it seeks to take the shit cast off after the process of life itself has sucked all value from it, and, stubbornly disputing the inexorable finality of entropy, it defiantly builds an empire of dung. Rock on brother from another mother. We feel your pain.