On a nice sunny day, there’s nothing a dung beetle likes to do more than seek out some animal faeces, ball it up and roll it away for suppertime. With a pair of poop-sensitive antennae on their heads, dung beetles use their keen sense of smell to locate and track down faeces. Like many other coprophagic critters, such as rodents and rabbits, dung beetles obtain nutrition from the unmetabolised nutrients that remain in other animals’ faeces. Scientists have even found that some dung beetles have a preference for faeces rich in nitrogen, which they use to build muscle-making proteins. They also prefer the dung of omnivores for its more pungent aroma compared to herbivore dung. It’s a competitive business: more than 80 species of dung beetles can find themselves fighting over the same meal, so finding food fast is essential to their survival.
For some of the 600 species of dung beetles on Earth, encountering a mound of dung prompts them to create spheres of faeces that are then rolled away to underground chambers to feast on later. To help them find their way back to their underground homes, dung beetles use the Sun’s position in the sky for guidance. Similarly, some nocturnal species, such as