Heliocopris dominus--better known as the
Elephant Dung Beetle. A couple weeks ago, my family and I went to the Festival
of Nations up in St. Paul for a weekend trip. The food was fantastic (save for the goat stew, which we were unfortunate enough to try), and there was music, dancing, and all sorts of strange things for sale in the bazaar. However, being the nerd I am, I
didn't get a pretty Chinese lantern or a shirt with a cheesy logo on it as a
souvenir. I bought a bug.
The Thailand booth is to blame. Along with
the usual kitschy porcelain bobbleheads, gaudy jewelry and traditional
clothing, they had a series of mounted…creatures…displayed on the wall. I don’t
say insects because they were not limited to the class insecta. There were
morpho butterflies, scorpions, and even some shriveled bats with demon eyes
mounted in shadow boxes and hanging on the wall. I was sorely tempted to buy
the bat for the simple sake of upholding my tradition of collecting the
strangest things possible, but I settled instead for the dung beetle. Perhaps
it’s for the better—the bat would be a little unnerving mounted on my wall,
watching me…
Delving into
research on the elephant dung beetle and the other members of the insect family
Scarabaidae unearthed some interesting information. There are over thirty
thousand species of scarab beetles worldwide, comprising ten percent of all
known beetles and ranging from the 6.7-inch Hercules beetle to the common June/May
beetle. Every continent (save Antarctica) plays host to some type or other of
scarab. Many species are cultivated as beneficial insects, and others were even
once worshipped as gods by ancient human civilizations.
The dung beetles
are some of the more famous members of family Scarabaidae. They’re widely
renowned for their peculiar habit of rolling, living in, and even eating packed
balls of animal feces. Of the thirty thousand known species of scarabs, seven
thousand are dung beetles, and despite their distasteful eating habits, they’ve
been rightly recognized by human societies throughout the centuries as a
beneficial insect. A single dung beetle is capable of burying two hundred and
fifty times its own weight in the course of one night, thus sanitizing its surroundings
and reducing breeding grounds for flies. Most dung beetles are capable of using
any type of animal feces, though most tend to prefer herbivore waste and a
certain few have very particular tastes. The elephant dung beetle, as its name suggests,
has a preference for elephant feces, while a species known as Zonocopris
gibbicolis feeds solely on snail waste (and will subsequently hitch rides on
the backs of said snails). Dung beetles are generally separated into three
separate types—dwellers, tunnelers, and rollers. The dwellers do simply
that—they dwell in the piles of animal waste that they find, and use it as food
for themselves and for newly-hatched grubs. The tunnelers live in dung piles as
well, but they create burrows underneath the piles and drag what they can of
the waste down with them for their pantries and nurseries. Rollers are the most
famous—as their name suggests, they’re the ones who pack their findings into
orange-sized dung balls, stand on their front legs, and roll their treasure
back to burrows that they build away from the original dung pile.
Dung beetles have
developed specialized physical traits to suit their various lifestyles. The
rollers, when pushing their food around, tend to stand on their front legs with
their back legs serving as hands. Since the beetle’s weight subsequently rests
entirely on the front legs, they’ve developed thick, stubby forelegs with
fluted edges to brace against the ground. Male dung beetles are also known to
steal dung balls from one another, so they’ve developed plated spikes on the
tops of their thoraxes designed for charging down rivals. They all tend to have
flat, spade-shaped heads, perfect for burrowing and shoving aside dirt as they
tunnel.
The mythology
behind the dung beetle was centered mostly in ancient Egypt. It was associated
with the god Khepri—one of the manifestations of the sun god Ra in his journey
through the underworld—who was said to roll the sun across the sky each day
after being born anew from the earth. This idea came, as one might expect, from
their habit of rolling large spheres of dung across the ground for no apparent
reason, and the apparent ability of their grubs to ‘create’ themselves by
popping up out of their ground after pupating within their burrows. The
Egyptians honored Khepri with statues, amulets, and murals in their temples and
tombs, oftentimes adorned with multicolored wings. The winged scarab was given
a special place in the mummification rites for which the Egyptians were so well
renowned—it was depicted as an amulet, usually made from lapis lazuli or
turquois and inlaid with the glasslike material known as faience, and was bound
over the heart of the corpse among the wrappings as protection against the
heart bearing witness against the deceased in the hall of judgment. Hence the
name—“heart scarab”. More often than not, these amulets were stolen by grave
robbers not long after burial, along with everything else in the tomb.
I’m fairly certain I
will be accused of picking disgusting topics for the Things from the Shelf
posts at some time or other, and, admittedly, that is true. That won’t stop me
from writing more, though. My shelf is still plenty full of unexplored research
topics, and I have every intention of taking advantage of that. If you have
comments or questions to offer, feel free to leave them in the comments section
below, and I encourage my readers to share to Facebook.
Happy reading!
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