So the question is, where do we start this story?
And it seems appropriate to start at the end,
because this is a waste product that comes out
of other animals, but it still contains nutrients
and there are sufficient nutrients in there
for dung beetles basically to make a living,
and so dung beetles eat dung, and their larvae
are also dung-feeders.
They are grown completely in a ball of dung.
Within South Africa, we've got about 800 species of dung beetles,
in Africa we've got 2,000 species of dung beetles,
and in the world we have about 6,000 species of dung beetles.
So, according to dung beetles, dung is pretty good.
Unless you're prepared to get dung under your fingernails
and root through the dung itself, you'll never see
90 percent of the dung beetle species,
because they go directly into the dung,
straight down below it, and then they shuttle back and forth
between the dung at the soil surface
and a nest they make underground.
So the question is, how do they deal with this material?