Ryan: When I think of dung beetles I think of the heavily carapaced variety, relentlessly rolling camel turds across the African savannah. Then I think of a friend of mine who camped somewhere in Egypt and said she could feel them crawling over her sleeping bag, possibly with their favourite foodstuff in tow. However, it turns out that there are a great many varieties of dung beetle found on all continents except Africa. They range in size from under a millimetre to up to 6cm and are divided into rollers, tunnellers or dwellers depending on what they do with the dung before they either eat it or lay their eggs in it.

Rollers are perhaps the most famous and the ones which evoke the most disgust from our species. But rather then being degenrate copraphages some 'roller' females show a great deal of parental care and will stay with their young larvae for two months, cleaning and feeding them. Nor were they universally reviled, and the sacred Scarab beetle of ancient Egypt is a member of this large family of beetles. They believed that it was the dung beetle that kept the earth in motion.