Mating method of dung beetle

If you want to raise dung beetles, you need to know what kind of mating dung beetles do, so let's take a look at how dung beetles mate.

Mating environment of dung beetles:

Dung beetles are probably most famous for their bad habit of eating shit. However, did you know that for dung beetles, feces are not only a source of food, but also an indispensable part of their mating behavior. Different species of dung beetles with different living conditions have different mating seasons. In West Africa, dung beetles can be found everywhere in the 3-4 weeks after the rainy season.

Factors affecting mating of dung beetles:

Changes in temperature and humidity caused by rainfall will also make dung beetles come out, but whether they reproduce depends on the quality of their faeces. The quality of feces is the best in the 6-8 weeks of spring. The mating season of dung beetles is generally very short. When it comes to mating behavior, some dung beetles drill holes under their feces, some push, and some like to live in feces.

How dung beetles mate:

The female dug a tunnel under the feces and piled up some food in it. The male enters the tunnel and is responsible for guarding the door. if any other male dares to come in, the male will greet each other with a head hammer and push. Generally speaking, it is the dung beetle with the largest body and the largest horn on its head that gets the mating right in the end.

Other smaller, hornless male dung beetles have come up with a clever way of digging a tunnel nearby, bypassing the gatekeeper, sneaking up to the female and inadvertently mating with the female. Interestingly, these small dung beetles have more sperm and are more likely to be fathers.

In addition to these general sexual behaviors, after the male dung beetle inserts the sexual organ into the female sexual organ, he leaves a sperm bag called the penis in the female's birth canal, and the female then puts the fertilized eggs into a hatching ball made of feces.

Shit pusher:

The shit pusher doesn't dig a hole, and the male pushes it with a ball of feces, and if the female likes it, she jumps on the dung ball and hitchhikes. After the male pushes the dung ball to the ideal place, he begins to play with the map to prevent other males from pushing the dung ball away or even throwing it somewhere else.

Once the right location is found, the couple will bury the dung ball in the soft soil, and the two shit pushers will begin to mate, mate and lay the fertilized egg in the dung ball.

Shit guy:

This kind of dung beetle is the laziest. After the fertilized eggs are wrapped in hatching balls, they are directly buried in fresh feces or hidden under the feces.

Each fertilized egg is wrapped in a hatching ball made of feces. Some larger dung beetles produce only 1-2 offspring a year, while others produce dozens of offspring a year. In some cases, females even live in feces to take care of the larvae to hatch.