{"id":569,"date":"2013-01-17T11:48:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T03:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/?p=569"},"modified":"2013-01-18T12:12:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T04:12:32","slug":"dung-beetles-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/17\/dung-beetles-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Dung Beetles at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-543\" alt=\"Jan13 007\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-007-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-007-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-007.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I have never seen so many dung beetles in one pile before. \u00a0It was the only offering in the paddock and it looked like they were queuing on the grass waiting their turn, with more flying in constantly.<\/p>\n<p>When the sea breeze starts in the afternoon, our covered deck area is like the dung beetle super highway and you hear constant \u00a0clicking noise as they fly into the side of the house and patio posts just following the scent upwind.<\/p>\n<p>According to Jim Heath, in his brilliant book on bush flies and dung beetles : &#8221; Adult beetles have mouths that can\u00a0<i>only<\/i>\u00a0suck juices from dung. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-568\" alt=\"Jan13 004\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-004-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-004-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-004-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-004.jpg 1247w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>They can&#8217;t live on anything else &#8212; even if they&#8217;re starving. (The beetle\u00a0<i>larvae<\/i>\u00a0have mouths that can bite and tear, but they can only feed on dung. If you take them out of a dung pad, they die quickly.)<\/p>\n<p>They breed in dung. \u00a0They feed on it. \u00a0They grow up in it. \u00a0The only time they aren&#8217;t actually living in it &#8212; or &#8216;working&#8217; in it &#8212; is when they&#8217;re flying around looking for a fresh mass of it. \u00a0Dung beetles not only help cut the fly population. They also help fertilise the soil: they bury the dung before it loses its nitrogen to the air.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.viacorp.com\/flybook\/fulltext.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.viacorp.com\/flybook\/fulltext.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DEkCrFnYm2M?rel=0\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have never seen so many dung beetles in one pile before. \u00a0It was the only offering in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,19,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farm","category-property","category-wildlife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Jan13-005.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}