You can miss this post if you like. It's about dung beetles.

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MyLotter Kharla Jolly (@kobesbuddy) wrote a lovely post recently entitled ‘Pardon the Horse Doo-Doos in the Photo’. You can catch up here: https://www.mylot.com/ post/3509924/ pardon-the-horse-doo-doos-in-the-photo. You might need to take out the space in the link. If I take it out half the link disappears for some reason. Maybe I need to apologise too, for this photo of horse dung. However, what is interesting is the sand around this manure. The sand is brought up from below by dung beetles (Scarabaeidae). CSIRO Australia says that, while Australia has several hundred species of dung beetle, they don’t cope well with the dung of introduced livestock, especially cattle. From 1969 to the mid-1990s, 53 species of dung beetles from Africa and Europe were introduced. The results have been remarkable. Dung beetles work in several ways: some bury the faeces by tunnelling under the dung and burying it; some roll the dung into balls and roll them away by pushing the ball with their back legs and some live inside the piles of dung. Here’s some more facts: • The average cow drops between 10 and 12 cow pats a day • One large cow pat can produce up to 3000 bush flies in a fortnight • Getting rid of the dung helps keep pasture ore palatable and results in less fouling of water run-off. Dung beetles are just another of Mother Nature’s wonderful creations The photo was taken by me at the endurance ride. I should have put a flag on this spot to see if the dung is completely gone next time I go there.