Q 01/05

Which feature of the night sky did planetarium tests show dung beetles use to roll their balls in straight lines?

A) The North Star

B) The Southern Cross

C) The Milky Way

D) Orion's Belt

Answer · why

C) The Milky Way

The Milky Way alone was enough: beetles in a Johannesburg planetarium held a straight course when only its faint band was shown. Vertebrates such as b...

Q 02/05

Which Egyptian god of the rising sun was pictured as a man with a scarab dung beetle for a head?

A) Anubis

B) Khepri

C) Thoth

D) Sobek

Answer · why

B) Khepri

Khepri was believed to push the sun into the morning sky just as a scarab pushes a ball of dung along the ground. Egyptians wore beetle amulets as pro...

Q 03/05

Relative to its size, the horned dung beetle Onthophagus taurus is considered which of these among all known animals?

A) The fastest runner

B) The highest jumper

C) The loudest

D) The strongest

Answer · why

D) The strongest

The strongest title comes from a male pulling 1,141 times its own body weight, like a person hauling six double-decker buses full of people.

Q 04/05

Dung beetles thrive from deserts to forests on every continent except which one?

A) Antarctica

B) Australia

C) North America

D) South America

Answer · why

A) Antarctica

Antarctica is the one gap because dung beetles avoid extremely cold or dry weather. Everywhere else they work deserts, grasslands, farmland and forest...

Q 05/05

Australia's native dung beetles evolved to bury the small, dry pellets of which animals, leaving cow pats untouched?

A) Wild horses

B) Dingoes

C) Kangaroos

D) Camels

Answer · why

C) Kangaroos

Kangaroos and other marsupials leave hard, fibrous pellets, so native beetles ignored the soft pads of imported cattle, which then lay on the pasture ...