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Dung Beetles Big and ugly but harmless Ignore
Whitehall Dung Beetle
I am sure that most people remember the friendly fresh-eating beetles from the Mummy movies. These things swarmed and moved inside of your body munching along with great rapidity. Well I have healthly-sized black beetles too.
I find a few a year dead or dying on the carpet. These are black, nearly two-inches long, about half as wide and have horns. There are good-sized wood-eating beetles in the South too, but fortunately these are not among them.
These feed and breed exclusively on and lay their eggs in dung. That is only half-way O.K. At least that means that they do not feed on me or my house – just on the droppings that my other coinhabitants leave around. Things like birds, bats and rats supply food for them. As long as I have dung beetles that means that I must also have, or have recently, had somethings that leave sufficient droppings for them to feed on and breed in.
They have their part to play in the biological cycle. While not as obvious as the colorful June bugs, that are also dung feeders, they are interesting beasties to have around were it not for the fact that they feed on the droppings of some of Whitehall’s more obnoxious inhabitants.
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