Science & technology | Waste management

The noisome economics of dung beetles

They are worth millions a year to cattle ranchers

Dung beetle rolling dung.
All the way to the bankPhotograph: Alamy

THE ENGLISH colonists who brought cattle to Australia in 1788 soon faced a malodorous problem. The dung heaps that gradually and tastefully vanished back home were not going anywhere. Instead, they were growing ever-larger, and becoming infested with bloodsucking flies that wounded the livestock.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The economics of dung beetles ”

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