New Dung Beetles

On Saturday morning after we’d had Sweetpea grazing on the driveway on Friday night, Les found a different type of dung beetle.   We’ve never seen a dung rolling beetle here before.  We think it is either Sisyphus Spinipes or Sisyphus Rubrus.  We’ll let you know once we’ve had it confirmed – we hope by the Dung Beetle Expert, Bernard Doube, who we saw present at Manning Landcare. 

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It is quite bizarre as our friends, Brian & Chris who’ve recently bought at Killabakh, called two days before saying they’d found a dung rolling beetle on their property.  It was previously thought that we didn’t have any of the dung rolling type  beetles in the area which makes this a most exciting find.

Dung beetles hard at work on the driveway

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who deceived the gods.  His punishment was to roll a boulder up a hill in hell only to watch it roll down again, over and over again.  Watching these critters roll up the dung and roll it away and bury it, makes you feel they are aptly named.

Annette Owen-Mulder

Annette Owen-Mulder

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