[TERRESTRIALS INTRO]

LULU MILLER: Three, two, one! Imagine you are scrolling through the millions of podcasts that exist out there, and you find a soul sister—a podcast that speaks to your heart, that feels like family, like kin, that investigates nature and animals and leaves you seeing the world anew. You have become the podcast Just the Zoo of Us, an episode of which I am gonna play for you today!

LULU: So this is Terrestrials. I'm Lulu. It's summer break, and we here at Terrestrials are doing some summer things. We're taking a couple weeks off. Alan is out there trying to eat as many hot dogs as is humanly possible. Anna is taking her hot dog, BB Queen, to the ocean to cool off. I'm going—I'm in a nature camp with my family. I'm very excited about that. And we thought during this time we could play you a show that we really love.

LULU: So I listen to a lot of podcasts. I love listening. I love seeing what people are doing out there. And this one really stuck out to me. Again, it is called Just the Zoo of Us, and it's by a husband and wife pair, Ellen and Christian. And on every episode, they rate a different animal. They call it an "animal review podcast." And they will rate a given animal. Maybe it's a leafcutter ant, maybe it's a red fox, maybe it's a sea turtle. I mean, they literally have hundreds of episodes. They will rate each animal on three qualities: effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

LULU: So effectiveness is just really how good the animal is at surviving in its environment. Ingenuity is how creatively it survives, how its adaptations or behaviors are different than other animals. And then aesthetics is kind of just a fancy word for how pretty or cool-looking it is. And so they rate it on those three things. And what I love about this podcast is that it's just this husband and wife pair working on this after their kids go to sleep for the love of nature. And so we're gonna play you part of an episode today. It sounds pretty different from our show. There's no music, no singing, but there is tons of scientific research and just a true delight and awe and enjoyment of the natural world and each other. And so I thought you guys might like it too.

LULU: I selected this episode in particular, because it is about something that you, our listeners, write in to tell us that you really like, that you have questions about, which is the topic of doo-doo. Yes, this is an episode about a beetle that loves doo-doo, otherwise known as the dung beetle. And it's a story that is gonna take us to incredible places. There's gonna be beetles in boots, beetles in hats, beetles in planetariums. So I hope you enjoy! Now there's their theme music again. They are called Just the Zoo of Us. So sit back, relax, stretch out your six tiny legs, and enjoy!

ELLEN WEATHERFORD: Hi there, it's Ellen Weatherford.

CHRISTIAN WEATHERFORD: And Christian Weatherford.

ELLEN: And this is Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we rate your favorite animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

CHRISTIAN: We are not zoological experts, but we try to get the best information we can.

ELLEN: I have literally the best information possible to share with you.

CHRISTIAN: Excellent.

ELLEN: I wanted to kick off this week's episode with an animal that I've really just been dying to talk about.

CHRISTIAN: And what is that, Ellen?

ELLEN: It's dung beetles.

CHRISTIAN: Ah!

ELLEN: This animal was requested by me. [laughs]

CHRISTIAN: [laughs] It does say that.

ELLEN: Yeah. I really wanted to talk about this. It had been really stuck in my mind, and I was sitting there waiting. I was like, every time someone would send in an email, I'd be like, "I hope they're asking about dung beetles." And I realized nobody was gonna ask me about dung beetles and I have to be the change I want to see in the world.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: So I took matters into my own hands and I said, "You know what? I'm gonna do one for me."

CHRISTIAN: Oh, good.

ELLEN: We're gonna talk about dung beetles. I'm getting my information from the San Diego Zoo, but also from a lot of other fun little sources that I'll cite as they come up. If you're not familiar with dung beetles, these are stout little beetles. They're kind of round shaped.

CHRISTIAN: Mm-hmm.

ELLEN: They're short and they eat mostly dung, which for young people listening who maybe haven't heard the word "dung" before, that means poop.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: They mostly eat poop. So we're gonna be talking about poop a lot in this episode. And typically that is mammal poop specifically, by the way.

CHRISTIAN: Oh!

ELLEN: because mammals just generate the type of poop that, like, works best for them. You know, you think of, like, bird poop, which is very liquidy and just kind of blech on the ground, you know?

CHRISTIAN: Sure.

ELLEN: Even the biggest dung beetles are only a couple of inches long. So they're not very big, but they have a big place in my heart.

CHRISTIAN: Oh!

ELLEN: [laughs] The true dung beetles make up a taxonomic subfamily called Scarabaeinae, and there are about 5,000 known species of true dung beetle.

CHRISTIAN: That's a lot!

ELLEN: It is. And there's other beetles outside of this family that you would consider a dung beetle because they eat mostly poop. I'm just trying to focus on the sort of true dung beetle family. And I found this interesting as I was kind of scrolling through the different species of true dung beetle. There is, in fact, a genus of dung beetle called Sisyphus.

CHRISTIAN: Hmm.

ELLEN: Do you know who Sisyphus is?

CHRISTIAN: Oh, the rolling the rock up—yeah.

ELLEN: Yeah, so Sisyphus is a character from mythology who's been mentioned on this podcast before from the Hot Wheels Sisyphus spider.

CHRISTIAN: What?

ELLEN: Do you remember me talking about that? There's a spider that some scientists named Hot Wheels Sisyphus, like genus Hot Wheels.

CHRISTIAN: Vaguely familiar.

ELLEN: Species Sisyphus.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: Sisyphus is a guy in Greek mythology where basically he was being punished by the gods, and his punishment was that he has to forever for the rest of eternity roll a boulder up a hill. And as soon as he gets the boulder to the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down to the bottom. He has to push it back up all the way over again. And he just does that back and forth forever for the rest of time.

CHRISTIAN: How come he doesn't just stop?

ELLEN: Why don't you ask him?

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: Hey, Sisyphus, have you thought of just not doing that? How about don't?

CHRISTIAN: Tell him.

ELLEN: And naturally, because he's pushing a boulder, that resembles the behavior of many species of dung beetles in which they roll poop into a ball, a large ball and push it around to get it from place to place.

CHRISTIAN: Katamari style.

ELLEN: Katamari style. Yes, exactly. So there are actually three different, like, types of dung beetle behaviors. There's three sort of like—they call them "guilds," which I think is really funny, like classes of dung beetle based on what they do with the poop. So there's rollers, which is probably what you're thinking of, where they roll it up into a ball like they're gonna make a snowman out of it almost, and they push it around to get it from place to place. So they'll find the poop, roll it up into a ball, and then roll it somewhere else. So they're transporting the poop to something like a nest or a burrow, something that they have dug, and then they kind of like bury it underground. Which I think is kind of funny because it's like humans kind of like to brag that they, like, invented the wheel. Like, dung beetles didn't also figure that out? It's like, yeah, round thing go fast. Yeah, we got that.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs] That's a ball, though.

ELLEN: I mean, yeah. But still, you know, they figured out, like, take thing, make round, then go.

CHRISTIAN: Sure.

ELLEN: But there's also tunnelers, which actually dig tunnels underneath the dung and then, like, carry it down into the tunnels below. So they don't actually roll it into a ball. They just kind of put their burrow under the dung and then just, like, let it down that way.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: And then there's a different group called dwellers. They just make themselves at home right there in the poop.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: Just dig straight into it. And they're like, "This is fine."

CHRISTIAN: And those are the three guilds.

ELLEN: Those are the guilds of dung beetles.

CHRISTIAN: Quick, tag yourself.

ELLEN: [laughs] I'm a dweller rising, roller sun, tunneler moon. Okay, so if this is your first time ever listening to this podcast, we rate animals out of 10. The first category is effectiveness, which is physical adaptations, things built into the animal's body that let it do the things they're doing. I am giving dung beetles a 9 out of 10.

CHRISTIAN: That's impressive!

ELLEN: They are so good. So the rollers, first of all, they go about rolling this ball in what I consider to be an unexpected way. If you've never, like, really looked at a dung beetle doing what they're doing, it might kind of catch you off guard, because I imagine if you tasked me with rolling a large ball around, I would push it with my arms, like put my hands against it and push it that way.

CHRISTIAN: Uh-huh?

ELLEN: That's not what they do. They turn around and push it with their legs.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: They do, like, a headstand. So they're standing on their forelimbs, so their front arms, what we would kind of think of being analogous to our arms, and they're pushing it with their back legs up against the ball, and they're, like, walking with their hands backwards.

CHRISTIAN: They're adding some razzle-dazzle.

ELLEN: It's a little flair, a little personality, which I think is kind of funny to look at. Now this requires the roller types of dung beetles to be quite strong. They are very, very powerful for their body size, right? Because remember, these are teeny tiny little bugs. But for example, the Taurus scarab, which is a species called Onthophagus taurus, which is so named because they have these little, like, bullhorns on the front of their head, which is kind of cool looking.

CHRISTIAN: What about that genus name?

ELLEN: Onthophagus? I don't know what "ontho" means. "Phagus" usually means they eat something. I don't know what the "antho" part means.

CHRISTIAN: I thought "phagus" was poop related.

ELLEN: No, you're thinking of coprophagy, which is actually the fancy word for eating poop.

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ELLEN: Yes, these are coprophagous bugs.

CHRISTIAN: Got it.

ELLEN: I don't know what "ontho" means, though. I didn't look into that. But this species has been documented pulling weight of over 1,100 times its own body weight.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: Which I believe makes them the strongest—definitely the strongest insect on record. I would also wager a guess that this would also make them the strongest animal in the world, like, relative to their body size.

CHRISTIAN: We see this a lot with insects.

ELLEN: Right. Yeah, because, you know, they're little. [laughs]

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: Picking up 1,000 times their body weight is like, you know, not really that heavy.

CHRISTIAN: It's not the kind of thing that scales. Like if you were to make the bug much, much bigger ...

ELLEN: Yeah, because I do think it's fun to make those comparisons of, like, if they were this big, they would pick something—they would lift something this size. Where it's like, it doesn't really work like that. Well, first of all, if they were this size, they would die.

CHRISTIAN: They would suffocate immediately.

ELLEN: [laughs]

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: They wouldn't be lifting much. But just for the record, that would be like if I lifted the Statue of Liberty.

CHRISTIAN: Nice.

ELLEN: I did the math for funsies.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, that's fun.

ELLEN: And that paper, by the way, that recorded that was called "Mating Tactics Determine Patterns of Condition Dependence in a Dimorphic Horned Beetle" by Robert J. Nell and Lee W. Simmons in the Proceedings of Biological Sciences in August of 2010.

CHRISTIAN: Did you mention where in the world one might find these?

ELLEN: Dung beetles?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: Everywhere.

CHRISTIAN: Like, on all continents?

ELLEN: Yeah, everywhere. Yeah, there's dung beetles everywhere.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, because I always picture them being in, like, a Sahara type setting.

ELLEN: For sure there.

CHRISTIAN: Because of documentaries and things, but I don't think I've ever seen one in person.

ELLEN: You may have, but just not known that that was what it was.

CHRISTIAN: Right. Not actively rolling poop.

ELLEN: Or it could have just been one of the kinds that doesn't roll poop. You know, like if you—actually, you know what? Because you have had a lot of time in your life on farms, you probably saw them there. They're big on, like, farmland. Because cattle, right?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: They're just leaving big piles of poop everywhere. There were definitely dung beetles out there. You probably just either didn't see them or didn't notice them.

CHRISTIAN: Interesting.

ELLEN: Or maybe just didn't recognize what they were doing. Many types of dung beetles can fly.

CHRISTIAN: Okay?

ELLEN: So like other beetles, they have flight wings that tend to be kind of tucked up underneath that, like, hard outer shell. If you think of a ladybug, which is a type of beetle, that part of the shell that's, like, colorful with spots on it, that's called the "elytra," which is like the outer casing of a beetle's wings. And they got little flight wings tucked up under there, so when they need to fly around, they just lift those up like a little spaceship hatch and, like, flutter around.

CHRISTIAN: Mm-hmm.

ELLEN: They can't fly very far. They're not really made for it, but they can fly around to, like, look for dung if they don't have any in front of them. Some dung beetles are kitted out with sick weapons, like a North American species called the rainbow scarab, which is gorgeous! They're like a really iridescent metallic, like, rainbow-y color. They're really, really cool, but they have, like, a giant unicorn horn sticking out of their face.

CHRISTIAN: Oh!

ELLEN: It's mostly for fighting each other.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: But as a little side note, the females of the rainbow scarab, they don't have horns. And I'm pretty sure that I saw rainbow scarabs on Cumberland Island in Georgia when I was, like, 10. I don't know.

CHRISTIAN: Oh.

ELLEN: I was a kid. And I'm pretty sure that I saw rainbow scarabs, because we were walking somewhere—and this is like a big, wide open grassy field and everything. We're walking along it and I see this beetle that I noticed for being just the most bright, colorful, gorgeous beetle. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is a beautiful beetle! And it didn't have horns, so I think it may have been a female of the rainbow scarab. And it looked exactly like that. And I remember my whole life thinking, you know, I think it was some type of dung beetle. It wasn't rolling dung, but I remember just it stuck in my head as being like a really cool beetle that I saw. And I checked, and that species has been documented on Cumberland Island.

CHRISTIAN: Oh!

ELLEN: So I think that's what I saw.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: Obviously I didn't take a picture because I was 10. But pretty sure I saw one.

CHRISTIAN: Nice.

ELLEN: Some dung beetles have spade-shaped heads for pushing the dung around. It's like they have a scoop almost on the front of their head, which is cool. They can kind of nudge dung around that way. But the dung can sometimes be a trap!

CHRISTIAN: How so?

ELLEN: Burrowing owls will sometimes collect mammal dung, which as you know, they do not eat. They have no need to be playing with mammal dung.

CHRISTIAN: Right.

ELLEN: They will arrange it close to the entrance of the owl's burrow.

CHRISTIAN: I see.

ELLEN: And then wait for the beetles to be enticed by the—what I'm sure is an alluring aroma of poop.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: They smell that poop and they're like, "Mmm, dinner. Mmm, delicious!"

CHRISTIAN: So it's bait for the beetles.

ELLEN: It is bait. Yeah, they will set out bait, which I think is points for the burrowing owl.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: That's tool use, right?

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

ELLEN: In fact, I got that observation from an article titled Use of Dung as a Tool by Burrowing Owls. That was by Douglas J. Levy in Nature in September of 2004.

CHRISTIAN: Wow!

ELLEN: So whether they're tunneling into the dung to live inside of it or rolling it around, I think they're pretty well suited to what they're doing. The next category that we rate animals on is ingenuity, which is behaviors, things the animal's doing to solve problems and thrive in their world. I'm giving them a full 10 out of 10 for ingenuity. Dung beetle behavior is wild. [laughs] It is so cool! First of all, the dung ball is in some ways a tool on its own for the dung beetle.

CHRISTIAN: Huh!

ELLEN: Because first of all, yes, you have taken a resource that you need to transport that is too heavy for you to just lift up and carry, right? Ants a lot of times will just pick something up and they just carry it around, right?

CWA: Yeah.

ELLEN: They're doing kind of the—I'm thinking the easy way, but they're lifting more weight. But dung beetle, I think just, like, turning the resource into a shape that can be easily transported, like manipulating the resource into a shape that you can transport, that right there is pretty smart, right?

CHRISTIAN: True.

ELLEN: Like, I think for an insect, having the ability to, like, turn something into something else is very smart. But they also use the dung ball as a tool. So since many dung beetles, like you mentioned earlier, live in very hot places, you'll often see them in deserts or in big grassy fields where, you know, the sun is shining and the ground underneath them is very hot. So if the dung beetle needs a break to cool off, they just climb on top of their dung ball and they take a little breather up there. And it helps them get away from the heat that's being reflected off of the ground.

CHRISTIAN: Sure.

ELLEN: So it's almost like a portable heat sink to, like, keep them away from the heat of the ground.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: And I got that from an article called "Dung Beetles Use Their Dung Ball as a Mobile Thermal Refuge," by Jochen Smolka et al in Current Biology in October 2012. And before I move away from this article, this is the thing. This is the thing that I really, really wanted to tell you about.

CHRISTIAN: All right.

ELLEN: I'm just gonna read straight from the article. This is just a quote from the paper. "To test if an increase in leg temperature during a rolling phase triggers ball climbing—" so they're testing to see if their legs got hot and that made them climb on top of the ball— "we applied insulating boots made from dental silicone to the beetles' front legs before testing them in a hot arena. With the boots on, the average rolling time between consecutive ball climbs almost doubled from 10.7 seconds to 20.8 seconds in the same individuals. Beetles with boots consequently climbed their ball 35 percent less often than without boots, indicating that ball climbing is mediated by temperature changes in the front legs."

CHRISTIAN: Huh.

ELLEN: So they put boots on beetles. They made little tiny rubber boots for the beetles. [laughs]

CHRISTIAN: So what color were they?

ELLEN: Blue!

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: And before you ask, yeah, there's a photo.

CHRISTIAN: Excellent.

ELLEN: I'm gonna pull up this picture for you real quick. Are you ready for this?

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ELLEN: This is the boots. [laughs] What is this Dr. Seuss thing?

CHRISTIAN: Listen, if it's too hot for your feet, it's too hot for their feet.

ELLEN: That's true. If you're hot, they're hot. Bring them inside. They got little boots on the beetles! Are you wearing the Chanel boots? Yeah, I am. Oh man, can you—I would have given anything to get to design the boots that they put on the little beetles.

CHRISTIAN: I wonder why the legs though. Why the legs specifically for temperature change?

ELLEN: Because that's the one touching the hot part.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, okay. And that's why it was only the front legs that they did the boots on.

ELLEN: Yes, because that's where they—they're also hand boots, I guess. So it's kind of like mittens.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: Mittens for beetles. Oven mitts for beetles!

CHRISTIAN: [laughs] Although I do like the imagery of them wearing rain boots on their hands.

ELLEN: That's basically exactly what they're doing in these pictures. It's so cute! It's adorable. So yeah, Dr. Seuss behavior going on in the science lab, putting little boots on little beetles.

CHRISTIAN: That's excellent.

LULU: We'll be back in a moment.

LULU: Vroop! All right, we're back. On with the story.

ELLEN: Now dung beetles are also very romance.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah?

ELLEN: Yeah, they're very romance. Male dung beetles will often present a desired female with their finest dung work.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: Their magnum poopus.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs] That's in your notes, isn't it?

ELLEN: Yeah, it is, actually. Google Docs is so mad at me. They're like, "You spelled this wrong."

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: So they'll present her with their finest dung ball to really—just to really woo her.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: You know, some girls want, like, a diamond ring, chocolates perhaps.

CHRISTIAN: So close.

ELLEN: Yeah, they almost had it. So once they present this female dung beetle with a ball of poop, the dung beetles will then work together as a mated pair to get the ball where they need to go. Now this is a surprisingly sophisticated operation, basically, because the beetles will stand on opposite sides of the dung ball and one will push and the other will pull.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, okay.

ELLEN: So they both have to get the ball to a location neither of them knows. This is not premeditated; this is not planned. They have to get it in a straight line to wherever it is they're trying to go—together, working on opposite sides. And they can't see each other because the dung ball is big and they are little. So I feel like anyone who's ever moved furniture with a partner can maybe relate to this a little bit. If you've ever tried to, like, carry a dresser. [laughs]

CHRISTIAN: It's an early relationship test.

ELLEN: It is. Well, I mean, if you're moving furniture, if you're moving in together, that shouldn't be—hopefully that's not that early in the relationship. But they've gone zero to a hundred. They are—they just met. He has just offered her a giant ball of poop. This is first date content for dung beetles. So they have to kind of navigate together. There's this paper called "Spider Dung Beetles: Coordinated Cooperative Transport Without a Predefined Destination." This was by Claudia Tocco et al in Proceedings of Biological Sciences in January of 2024. That's this year!

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: It's like a few months ago. And to read from this paper—because I found this really interesting. Quote, "Pairs of male and female dung beetles successfully transport brood balls to a location unknown to either party at the start of their common journey. We found that when forced to overcome a series of obstacles in their path, transport efficiency of pairs of beetles was higher than of solo males. To climb tall obstacles with their common ball of dung, the female assisted the leading male in lifting the ball by steadying and pushing it upwards in a headstand position during the climb initiation." So basically the female is kind of helping keep the ball steady or helping push it along. Like, the male is sort of leading the way and the female is sort of helping it, like, stay on track and stuff. And they do a better job of it when they work together rather than when the male is solo.

CHRISTIAN: Good.

ELLEN: Which I think is really interesting. Something that the researchers mention is that the manipulation of this large heavy object over obstacles, up steep inclines, stuff like that, probably requires some type of communication between the beetles, but that's a complete mystery still. Nobody knows if they are communicating with each other, how they're doing that. And it just seems to be that maybe they can just kind of feel which way the ball is going. Maybe they can feel where the other beetle is touching the ball.

CHRISTIAN: Oh!

ELLEN: Like, it could be something like that. Maybe it's just, like, tactile communication between them. But it seems to be a—it seems to be working for them. It reminds me a lot of, like, if you've ever tried to play an online game with people who don't have a microphone.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: You have to, like, emote to communicate. 

CHRISTIAN: Emote your way to victory.

ELLEN: [laughs] It's a little bit like playing Journey. Have you seen that? Have you played that game Journey?

CHRISTIAN: I don't think so, no.

ELLEN: It's kind of like a little puzzle exploration game where you're playing it with another player, but you have no means of communicating with each other. You have to just kind of gesture at each other to solve puzzles and stuff. It's really cool. Now it's not all sunshine and rainbows for dung beetles, because sometimes the beetles may steal a dung ball from another beetle.

CHRISTIAN: Dishonorable!

ELLEN: This is so dis—and even to add sort of insult to injury, if a female has already, like, gripped the dung ball, she's already, like, locked in, she stays loyal to the dung ball, not the male. So if someone comes along and steals your dung ball, they stole your dung and your girl.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: This is like the ultimate mogging. You're done. You just got wrecked. They took your dung and your girl.

CHRISTIAN: Some Game of Thrones stuff.

ELLEN: Atrocious. Yeah. [laughs] And so more kind of on the topic of navigation, because I mentioned that they have to get a ball from point A to point B in a straight line, because if you're zigzagging too much, you know, you're gonna run into stuff. You're—it's not very efficient. You're ball's gonna get stolen. It's introducing a lot of opportunity for bad things to happen to your ball, so they do it in a straight line. Now they can do this even at night when it is dark, which has led scientists to find that their eyes are actually able to detect the polarization patterns of moonlight.

CHRISTIAN: Wow!

ELLEN: To tell them which way they're facing. So they can actually use the sun and the moon and the positions of the stars to see where they are on the ground and know which way to go. And some research has even shown that some dung beetles, like the African species Scarabaeus satyrus, can even use the light from the Milky Way galaxy overhead like a compass to navigate. And this is a really cool study. The title is "Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation." This was by Marie Dacke et al in Current Biology in February of 2013. So they basically let a bunch of dung beetles, like, navigate in different lighting conditions to see, like, what they were—what cues they were taking, you know, how they were getting or how well they were getting from point A to point B under different lighting conditions. This study did involve letting the beetles roll dung around in a planetarium, which is very whimsical.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, like a sit down and look up at the stars planetarium?

ELLEN: Like a dome with, like, astral— not astral projection.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: Celestial projections overhead so that they could, like, change what kind of light was overhead the beetles and they—yeah. So planetarium. They were letting the beetles roll around, which I think is very whimsical.

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ELLEN: And a nice image. But here's something else. During this study, the researchers, of course, had to try blocking the beetles' view of the sky by outfitting them with little cardboard hats that covered their heads so they couldn't see the sky. Y'all cannot stop dressing up these beetles!

CHRISTIAN: [laughs] And the next one is gonna be about seeing if this handbag looks good.

ELLEN: [laughs] Let's see how much funding we can get to see if beetles wore pants, would they wear them like this?

CHRISTIAN: Although with the stars saying it, that was—that poem comes to mind. The we are all in the gutter ...

ELLEN: I have that in my notes.

CHRISTIAN: No way!

ELLEN: It's so funny that you mentioned that. It is an Oscar Wilde quote.

CHRISTIAN: Ah.

ELLEN: The quote goes, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

CHRISTIAN: Oh.

ELLEN: Yeah. Isn't that so perfect for dung beetles that roll around poop while ...

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ELLEN: ... looking at the Milky Way while stargazing? Isn't that gorgeous?

CHRISTIAN: It is.

ELLEN: It also reminds me of the first time I saw the Milky Way galaxy.

CHRISTIAN: Oh yeah?

ELLEN: Do you remember that?

CHRISTIAN: I do.

ELLEN: Do you remember what I said to you? [laughs] We were out there. It was like a—it was a new moon, so it was, you know, great. We went all the way out to Osceola State Forest. We had, like, a favorite little dark sky spot out there. And this was really, I think, probably my first time being out in, like, true proper dark sky. And we get out there. We were trying to—we were going out there for a meteor shower, I think.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: It was gonna be a meteor shower. And we go out there and I look up and I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool!" I said, "I hope that these clouds move away by the time the meteors start." And you were like, "What clouds?" I was like, "That big cloud! It's been over us this whole time and it's not moving. These clouds—" I was like, "I wish the wind would pick up so that these clouds would blow away." You were like, "That is the Milky Way galaxy, and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon."

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: It's like, "Oh." [laughs] But having been out in an actual, like, dark sky.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: You know, I get it. I see why beetles would use that for navigation. I wonder if—I didn't find this while researching, but I wonder if that means light pollution has affected dung beetle navigation.

CHRISTIAN: Hmm, must have.

ELLEN: Must have, right?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: Like, I feel like light pollution is bad for a lot of animals that rely on celestial light. But so yeah, I think it's really—I think it's really fascinating how they use the night sky to push poop around.

CHRISTIAN: How nice.

ELLEN: Now the final category we rate animals on is aesthetics, just how nice this animal is to look at. I'm giving them a 9 out of 10. They're so cute. Have you, like, really looked at a dung beetle?

CHRISTIAN: Um, no.

ELLEN: They're adorable! They're actually so cute. They have—they're really round. They have, like, one of those cute beetle faces. It's not super, like, mandible heavy.

CHRISTIAN: Sure.

ELLEN: I think they're so cute! And a lot of them have really pretty colors, and I think that's really nice. I think dung beetles are adorable, and I like them very much.

CHRISTIAN: Good.

ELLEN: Now in the sort of little culture corner, first of all, the scarab beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, was revered in ancient Egypt and is featured in a lot of ancient Egyptian art, jewelry and architecture. So if you've ever looked at, like, ancient Egyptian stuff, and you see a little beetle design, that's usually—it's the sacred scarab, which is a type of dung beetle, and it is a roller. So they do roll dung balls.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

ELLEN: The connection here, the significance here is that the beetle was seen as a symbol of the god Khepri, and Khepri pushed the sun across the morning sky the way that a scarab beetle pushes a dung ball. So the ball-pushing thing was seen as symbolic of rolling the sun into the morning sky.

CHRISTIAN: I see.

ELLEN: That's why the god Khepri was usually depicted with the head—like, his head being a scarab beetle. So the beetle was associated with—there's a whole sort of suite of sun gods that are all associated with, like, the movement of the sun in the sky. And this is one of them. So that's sort of the significance there of, like, the scarab and why you see scarabs in so much Egyptian and stuff. And just to kind of wrap things up for the dung beetle, I want to talk about their benefits to the ecosystem, because I think maybe people see little bugs crawling around in poop and they think, "Ew, gross! I don't want that. Like, that's nasty." Dung beetles are awesome to have around. You really, really want them, especially on a farm or in pasture land or something like that. They're very important. First of all, they help aerate the soil by digging around in the ground, right? Like, letting air in and sort of keeping the ground from getting too compacted, which is really important. They also help cycle nutrients. So burying dung actually keeps the dung from just drying out in the sun. So you're bringing that dung down into the soil, which helps it fertilize the soil a lot better. Keep—because once it's dried out, it's really difficult to break down.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: So you really want it— like, it just really gets it mixed into the soil, helps fertilize the dirt a lot better. It's also really crucial in controlling fly populations.

CHRISTIAN: Really?

ELLEN: Because if poop's just sitting there, flies are gonna come by, right? They're gonna come by and lay their eggs in it, and then they're gonna make more baby flies. You're gonna have a big fly problem, which is what happened in Australia when cattle were introduced. So cattle were introduced, and Australia has native species of dung beetle, but they were not prepared for cattle at all.

CHRISTIAN: [laughs]

ELLEN: Like, they were used to much smaller poop. They were not ready for cattle. They were like, "Oh no!"

CHRISTIAN: The feast.

ELLEN: Yes. But they couldn't keep up with all of the cow dung that was left everywhere. So there were massive piles of poop everywhere and the flies became uncontrollable, particularly, one of them was called the buffalo fly. And they were—it was just—it was wild. Like, it was completely unmanageable. The flies were out of control. So starting in 1965, the Australian Dung Beetle Project released African dung beetle species into Australia and Tasmania to great success. This is not usually an introduced species success story.

CHRISTIAN: Right.

ELLEN: But it worked. It was great.

CHRISTIAN: No gotchas or anything?

ELLEN: No gotchas. It was just—it was just awesome.

CHRISTIAN: All right.

ELLEN: [laughs] Everything was fine. They introduced dung beetles that were more—you know, in Africa they have much—like, very large herbivores that were much more prepared to handle the type of poop that cows put out. And they did great, and they got the flies under control and it was just hugely helpful for the ecosystem.

CHRISTIAN: Nice.

ELLEN: Usually when things are introduced to a new place, it goes bad.

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ELLEN: This is a case of it going good. So thanks, dung beetles!

CHRISTIAN: Or at least of the stories we hear about.

ELLEN: Yeah, that's true.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: The ones that are notable enough for us to talk about them.

CHRISTIAN: I do wonder ...

ELLEN: It's usually for bad reasons.

CHRISTIAN: I do wonder how many there are where it's just uneventful.

ELLEN: That's true. Like, I guess we don't really talk about it unless something terrible happens. Well, here you go. I'm talking about it. Something good happened, and it's dung beetles. So thanks, dung beetles!

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ELLEN: We love you. And that's dung beetles.

CHRISTIAN: Thanks, babe.

ELLEN: Thank you! Okay, darling, what animal do you have for us this week?

CHRISTIAN: This week I'm talking about the giant moray eel, scientific name Gymnothorax javanicus.

LULU: And that is where I'm gonna leave it. It's Lulu here again. If you want to hear all about the moray eel, it's green, it's sometimes yellow, it's huge, it's pretty scary. Go listen to the rest of that episode of Just the Zoo of Us. That is episode 253, "The Dung Beetle and the Moray Eel." Or go check out any of their other hundreds of delightful episodes. Terrestrials will be back in two weeks. We'll be back from our summer break with another Terrestrials for you right here in the feed. Hope you have a great one. See you in a couple spins of this dirty old planet of ours. Bye!

 

-30-

 

Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

 

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.