The Life & Times - That's a lot of dung

Several months ago I wrote about some of the strange wildlife we had found at The Village.  See it here:  the cricket

A couple weeks back I found this fantastic specimen.  It is a dung beetle, but not just any dung beetle.  You can see from the pictures that this isn't your normal, everyday, conveniently packaged fun-size dung beetle.  This is the king of dung beetles.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, I've posted a bit of information about the Scarabaeoidea superfamily.  The most interesting note of which is that dung beetles are native to every continent, except, of course, Antarctica.  I'd always thought of them as African, probably because they're so commonly related to Egyptian culture.  Also, they're pretty cool to watch as they shape their collection of manure particles into a ball and roll it backwards.

Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces.  Many dung beetles, known as rollers, are noted for rolling dung into spherical balls, which are used as a food source or brooding chambers. Other dung beetles, known as tunnelers, bury the dung wherever they find it. A third group, the dwellers, neither roll nor burrow: they simply live in manure. They are often attracted by the dung burrowing owls collect.