Minotaur beetle (Typhaeus typhoeus ) by Ray Purser Photography

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14-MAR-2008	Ray Purser

Minotaur beetle (Typhaeus typhoeus )

Notts

One of the Dung beetles in the order Coleoptera this is a male @1.5cm .

Canon EOS 350D
1/4s f/20.0 at 100.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto

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All Images copyright of Ray Purser 2006/2022 please ask before copying/uploading any Image.

larose forest photos		22-Aug-2009 03:10
Super shot of this fascinating beetle. V

edwina beaumont		25-Oct-2008 13:04
Very good clear set of pictures. never seen this one. Is it British? good to get the extra info from Tim

Tim Palmer		03-Aug-2008 12:25
Nice photo. It clearly shows the arrangenment of the male beetle's horns. This species digs an underground burrow in sandy soil, up to about a metre deep, working as a pair with the female doing the digging and the male clearing away the spoil. They provision branches of the burrow with dung (usually rabbit dung) 'sausages', one large egg per sausage and about four or five sausages per nest. The males use their horns for fighting off rival males who invade their underground tunnels. If you look at the photo you can see how they do this. Imagine two males facing each other in a tunnel that is just wide enough for them to walk down. One male turns upside-down so that he is now walking on the ceiling with his back touching the floor of the tunnel. Now you can see how the two males' horns will interlock with the pronotal (frontal) shield of the other like two pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. In this position they have a beetle version of an arm-wrestling contest, each pressing upwards against the other using their powerful digging muscles. Sometimes they swap positions and if the beetles are evenly matched the contest can go on for some time. Eventually the loser (who turns out to be he smaller of the two) gives up and leaves the burrow. If the invader is the winner, he immediatly goes down to the botttom of the burrow, finds the female (working hard as usual) and mates with her. Oh, and they also stridulate (squeak like grass-hoppers) using a file and scraper mechanism located in the hind coxal cavity (hip joint). You may have heard this one squeaking when you picked it up. Nobody knows exactly why they do it.

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