Mother Jones

COME UNDUNG

How one of our most successful humanitarian efforts is becoming a foul problem for the planet

TO THE EXTENT that we think about them at all, people tend to regard dung beetles as entertainment, rolling, tumbling, even somersaulting over massive balls of elephant poop. But the 5,000 or so species at work on every continent except Antarctica are as important as pollinators.

Animals unload an estimated 100 billion tons of dung on Earth every day. Just one cow can drop 20 cowpats daily and quickly smother a landscape in manure. By bringing poop back to their underground nests and feeding it to their young, dung beetles not only clear pastureland and reopen it for

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Mother Jones

Mother Jones9 min read
Well Played
THEY MIGHT NOT know his name, but millions of video gamers have encountered narrative designer Evan Narcisse’s handiwork in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which showcases more Black and Brown characters in its first few minutes than most popular
Mother Jones6 min readAmerican Government
Party Crashers
EVEN BEFORE THE last shots of the Revolutionary War were fired, John Adams wrote a friend to warn, “There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties.” Alas, political scientists will tell you the winner-takes-all
Mother Jones3 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Abortionist
IN 2007, AFTER Paul Ross Evans pleaded guilty to leaving a bomb outside of a women’s health clinic in Austin, he assured the judge: He never meant for anyone to get hurt. “Except,” he clarified, “for the abortionists.” For almost two centuries, the m

Related Books & Audiobooks