Addo flightless dung beetle

Apart from the wild animals that visitors to the Addo Elephant National Park hope to see, there are warning signs throughout drawing one’s attention to the presence of the Addo flightless dung beetles (Circellium bacchu). While these beetles are endemic to a few areas in Southern Africa, the Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape has the biggest population of them. I have written before about these unique arthropods which lack wings and mostly feed on elephant or buffalo dung.

The warning signs are to stop visitors from driving over the beetles and the balls of dung they may be rolling across the road. The dung beetles have right of way – yet many drivers ignore the signs and crush the beetles under the wheels of their vehicles without another thought. As I have noted before, we need to heed the signs, heed the piles of dung in the road, and be particularly careful to heed the presence of these rare species on the road: every beetle needlessly crushed under the wheels of vehicles means a life cycle that cannot be completed!

We were able to get a very close look at one of the dung beetles whilst we were enjoying a picnic in the Addo Elephant National Park. Although she used my cell phone, I am grateful to my granddaughter, who was able to take these lowdown pictures of the beetle for me, which I hope you will enjoy too.

Its droppings.

Tarun Kanti Rout introduces dung beetles in his poem of the same name as:

Rolling dung into stunning round balls of power

Beetles neither wait for the seasons to change

Nor trees to throw dry leaves as pittance.

They know the worth of the sense of smell

What they are smelling, of course, is fresh dung. While dung beetles occur in many parts of the world, those in the Addo Elephant National Park are among the largest in the world. These flightless dung beetles are known as the Addo Flightless Dung Beetle (Circellium bacchus) as there is a large population of them in this national park. As they remain in a torpid state during winter and are generally more visible during the warmer weather, especially after the first rains, several could recently be seen crossing the tarred roads in the park.