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Dear Jamie:
Speaking of poop, I just saw quite a few of my dung beetle friends hanging out in the latrines. To
certain types of beetles and flies, dung and dead animals are perfect places to raise offspring!
Dung beetles roll poop into balls which they bury and lay their eggs in. Then their larvae hatch on
what will be their first meal - a nutritious, protein-packed pile of poop! Bluebottle flies do the
same thing on dead animals. By eating and breaking down dung and corpses, both types of bugs return
important nutrients like nitrogen and carbon to the soil.
After a bluebottle fly lays its eggs on a dead animal, the larvae hatch and quickly burrow
through the corpse's nostrils or eye sockets. They ooze digestive juices from their mouths to break
down the dead flesh into a soupy liquid. The larvae suck this up, and when it's all over a skeleton
and a bit of fur end up as leftovers.
Despite what they eat, dung beetles and bluebottle flies aren't disgusting bugs - they're just
doing their jobs as members of nature's clean-up crew. We would all be up to our eyeballs in poop
and carcasses without these humble yet powerful creatures.
By eating, digesting, and excreting, bug larvae recycle poop and animal remains into tiny
pieces that form humus. (It's basically the same thing that worms do when you use them for
recycling - visit Wendell's Worm World to learn more). What's so important about humus? Not much -
except that all life depends on it! This moist, dark, nutritious material is the good stuff in soil
that lets plants grow healthy and strong. And this means all animals that depend on plants,
including you and me, can grow healthy and strong, too.
Signed,
Wendell
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