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FACT: Dung beetles use the Milky Way to steer their poop balls
By Christie Taylor
A dung beetle is a deceptively humble creature. Humble, in the sense that they literally eat and raise their young in poop. Deceptive in the sense that they perform incredible feats of strength, play an underappreciated ecological role, and can even (in some cases) appreciate our place in the cosmos.
Dung beetles are all members of the scarab family. And if the word “scarab” evokes ancient Egypt for you, there’s a reason. The scarab-headed god Khepri was, in fact, a dung beetle. Ancient Egyptians had seen these beetles rolling balls of dung, and connected them to the sacred, dung ball-like orb of the sun itself, as well as concepts of renewal and rebirth.
In any terrestrial ecosystem, a fresh pile of poop is an entire universe. Beetles eat dung, flies lay eggs, other insects come to eat the larvae of these animals. It’s a beautiful stinky circle of life.
It’s also dangerous and competitive, which is why one group of dung beetles has a strategy for success: get some poop, pack it into a ball, and roll it the hell out of there. These balls are sometimes 50 times their weight, and they’ll move them as far away as 200 meters before burying…
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