蜣螂（屎壳螂）通常以粪便或腐殖质为食,在生态系统平衡中具有重要的作用，蜣螂的生态价值，包括转将运粪便到地下、对种子二次传播的作用、传粉作用、对有害生物的控制作用和寄生虫的中间宿主，所以有着“自然界中的清道夫”美誉，那么我们在看到蜣螂在推粪球时总是用自己的后腿去推动粪球，而不是用前腿去推动，今天豆丁就给大家揭开这小秘密。
Feces push
Dung beetles can roll dung balls Everyone knows, so why use the hind legs to push the dung balls, I think many people don't know it
Have one's shoulder to the collar
Let's first find out why dung beetles roll dung balls
In order to survive, dung beetles often make feces into balls, roll them to a reliable place to hide, and then slowly eat them, and a dung beetle can roll a ball of feces that is much larger than its body. Dung beetle pushing fecal balls is also for the purpose of breeding offspring, don't look at the feces smelly, for the baby of the shell lang is an indispensable food to maintain life, the baby has not yet been born, the mother of the shell lang prepared the most abundant food for them.
Born with a dung bucket
Dung beetles use shovel-shaped heads and paddle-shaped antennae to roll feces into a ball that can reach 5 times its own weight and be the size of a large orange. In early summer, dung beetles bury themselves and dung balls in underground earthen chambers and feed on them, and females lay eggs in the dung balls and hatch larvae feed on them. Dung beetles can eat more food than they weigh in 24 hours, which is beneficial to humans because it accelerates the process of converting feces into substances that other organisms can use. Dung beetles can clean up animal feces, suppress other fecal-feeding pests, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the U.S. Institute of Biological Sciences, dung beetles save the U.S. cattle industry $380 million a year in the cost of manure cleanup. In Australia, the original dung beetle breeds only like to eat small pieces of manure such as kangaroo manure, rather than foreign cattle and sheep manure, from 1965 to 1985, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization began the Australian Dung Beetle Program, which improved the problem of fecal accumulation in Australian pastures and reduced about 90% of harmful jungle flies.
Push the stool backwards
Finally, we interpret why dung beetles push the dung ball backwards
In fact, when the dung beetle pushes the dung ball, it is often done by a pair of male and female dung shell langs, the front dung beetle is pushing backwards, the dung beetle in the back is pushing, and the reason why the dung shell lang pushes backwards is because the dung beetle has to judge the direction of travel according to the natural sun or stars. Dung beetle pushing the dung ball upside down In addition to judging the direction of travel, dung beetle pushing the dung ball upside down is easier to control the rolling trajectory of the dung ball, when encountering obstacles, the dung beetle pulls forward forcefully, and the dung beetle that pushes behind will bow its head down and push forward hard.
Balls of stool
There are also many people who think that dung beetles love to be clean, because when the front legs touch the dung ball, then their mouth will touch the dung ball.
There are also people who think that the hind legs are stronger, and if you want to push a dung ball that is several times larger than your body, you must go all out. Hind legs are generally stronger than the front legs.
So what do you think?