scarab beetle
drawing by Erin, Indian Mills Memorial School, Shamong, NJ

Scarab Beetle

This page is also available in Spanish: en Español.

There are many herbivores that eat a lot of grass on the African savannas. These herbivores produce a lot of dung, or droppings. What happens to the dung? Very special insects called scarab beetles, or dung beetles, break up the dung pats and move it away.

Dung beetles find fresh dung by smell. Once they find it, they either begin to eat it, or they start rolling balls of it away. The beetles stand on their front feet and push the ball of dung with their back feet. These dung balls can be bigger than the beetle!

When they find a soft patch of ground, they bury the dung ball. This keeps the dung moist. Before they close the hole, the female lays an egg in the top of the ball. When the egg hatches, the larvae stays inside the dung ball and eats it from the inside out. Eventually, it will pupate and hatch as a new, hungry adult.

If these beetles did not exist, the pats of dung would harden and cover the ground. Grass and other plants would not be able to grow. In Australia, there are no native dung beetles. When people brought cattle to this continent, their dung was not recycled into the earth, and the hardened dung kept grass from growing in fields. People introduced dung beetles, and they have helped to solve this problem. By breaking up the dung and burying it, the scarab beetles also help to fertilize the land.

The Ancient Egyptians believed the scarab beetles to be sacred. They believed that scarab beetles rolled the sun across the sky the same way they would a ball of dung. They also thought that the beetles were symbols of rebirth, because of they way the parent beetle would bury itself underground and the newly hatched adults would emerge. The Ancient Egyptians carved stones into the shape of scarab beetles as good luck charms. Though most people no longer believe they are sacred, scarab beetles are very important to the ecosystems of Africa.