Yesterday evening, a neighborhood white-tailed deer left a nice deposit of pellets in our front yard. It wasn't long before a gaggle of dung beetles showed up and got to work. These were female Texas black phanaeus (Phanaeus texensis). This turned out to be our evening's entertainment, watching the beetles crash land and then rush over to the pile. They tussled and fought over each other's dung balls. How do they find poop? According to the San Diego Zoo, they use specialized antennae to detect dung aromas from the air.
James took this video (above) last month on our rural property. He filmed (and bothered) quite a large crowd of dung beetle girls!
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