Dung Beetles Have Mobile Coolers

Taking a peek into the world of insects, a new study uncovers certain interesting and sophisticated strategies insects and other cold blooded creatures employ in order to maintain their body temperatures

The dung beetles are known for rolling their share of dung away in order to avoid other hungry competitors at the dung pile.  And the team of researchers from South Africa and Sweden discovered that the beetles use the ball of moist dung to stay cool even as they push a weight across the hot soil.

This finding marks the first example of an insect using a mobile thermal refuge in this way.

"The beetles climb on top of their moist balls whenever their front legs and heads overheat," said Prof. Marcus Byrne from Wits University. "We stumbled upon this behaviour by accident while watching for an 'orientation dance' which the beetles perform on top of their balls to work out where they're going. We noticed that they climbed their balls much more often in the heat of the midday sun."

Apart from this the researchers also depicted that this midday phenomena was true only when beetles were moving across the hot ground. The researchers noticed that on the hot soil the beetles climb their balls several times.

In order to confirm about the beetles hot legs forcing them to climb the ball of dung, the researchers put some cool silicone boots to their front legs as a protection from the heat.

"To our great surprise, this actually worked, and beetles with boots climbed their balls less often," said Dr Jochen Smolka from Lund University, who collaborated on the research.

A peculiar trait was noticed when the beetles were on the top of the ball at the midday. They often wipe their faces and the researchers suspect that this preening behavior spreads regurgitated liquid onto their legs and head to cool them down further. That's something the insects never do at other times of day.

This finding presents one of the creative solutions found in nature about cooling mechanism.

According to Smolka, "Evolution has an astonishing ability to make use of existing structures for new purposes -- in this case using a food resource for thermoregulation."