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Ask your parents. Ask them if there were more flies around when they were young. They will tell you that there were. Why aren't there as many flies now? The answer is dung beetles. |
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Dung beetles are amazing little animals. They are good fliers and they collect on fresh cow droppings. They collect the dung and roll it into balls. Then they lay their eggs in the dung and bury the balls under the ground. |
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Many dung beetles can go to work on one animal dropping. The fresh dung of a cow or other animal can be completely buried in a couple of days. This means that flies don't have a chance to lay their eggs on dung, so there are less flies. Most of the dung beetles come from other countries. They have been brought into Australia especially to stop flies breeding. Farmers and scientists have been releasing different species of dung beetles into farming areas for several years now. It's been working. There are definitely less flies now that there were when your parents were your age. |
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Did you know? 1. A pile of elephant dung of 1.5 kg had 16 000 dung beetles. The dung disappeared in two hours! 2. Dung beetles help to fertilize soil. 3. Marsupials have hard, dry dung. This is why Australian dung beetles could not attack cow dung. |
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To use this page effectively, children will need a worksheet from 'Minibeasts.net' from Elton Publications. |