I'm going to give you a mystery. Imagine a pile of manure covered in about a dozen beetles.

I know, weird way to start a mystery, but who do you think I am, Agatha Christie? It's about to

get much, much weirder. The beetles are black and oval shaped, with a small crown of six

short spikes on the front of their heads. Their front two arms are

covered in comb-like branches. Each beetle is about an inch long. They are mostly eating dung. But now

imagine a few of these beetles begin cutting up the dung with their heads and rolling it into balls

larger than themselves. Each beetle stands atop their ball and dances.

They spin around in circles on top as if they are trying to make themselves dizzy. They perform this simple little jig,

and then they crawl down into a handstand and begin pushing their ball backwards, using their back feet, staying in a handstand.

Each of the Beatles, who rolled up a ball, leaves the manure pile in this manner,

pushing their portion backwards in a perfectly straight line away from the pile.

And when I say perfectly, I really do mean perfectly.

I mean, regardless of the obstacle, they keep their line straight and roll away with their dung until they're out of sight, about a football field's length away.

There, they're going to bury themselves with their dung, possibly only reemerging days later.

Arguably, I just gave you a whole bunch of mysteries, a family-size

package of mysteries. What are they doing rolling up manure into balls? Why are they dancing before they

go? Why perfectly straight lines? Why are they burying the feces of other animals? There's also a how.

How are they able to achieve perfectly

linear movement moving backwards in a handstand rolling a huge piece of dung? Today, all these

mysteries will be solved, but not for another few minutes, so think about it. For now, we are going to start talking about the dung beetle, specifically the sacred scarab.

Scarabias, sacer.

I'm Mackin, this is feces.

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