We have previously learned that dung beetles are not a bastion of virtue with respect to sexual fidelity. They also apparently have little respect for property rights.
This accusation is being specifically levied against the kinds of dung beetles which cutely roll around on top of little balls of poop and does not necessarily apply to those more mudane species which merely tunnel into a lump of excrement and make their home therein. A "poop roller" (hereinafter referred to as a "PR") has no qualms about stealing a ball of feces from one of his companions. A PR who freshly puts together a ball of poop from a pile of droppings must thus quickly make a straight-line exit away from the commotion to avoid being hijacked by another PR.
This is not as simple as you may believe. The PR stands on the ball of feces facing backwards when he rolls it and cannot see where he is going. Since the ball is rarely an absolutely perfect sphere and the ground is never perfectly flat, random rolling would routinely result in the PR traveling in a circle back to the other dung beetles, who would then steal his precious cargo.
Instead of operating blind, however, the PR has an exquisitely fine-tuned navigation system. During the day, he can detect patterns (invisible to humans) in the polarization of light from the sun to keep his course. During the night, he navigates by aligning himself with the Milky Way Galaxy. If he loses his bearings, he will dance around the top of the ball of dung until he aligns himself with the stars again.
Scientists discovered that it was the Milky Way Galaxy, and not some other constellation, through judicious experiments involving turning PRs loose in planetariums with the stars displayed on the ceilings. As a control for the experiment, they also at times had to put darling little hats on the beetles to prevent them from viewing the sky.
You may ask, however, what about PRs in the Northern Hemisphere, where the Milky Way Galaxy is not as visible? Maybe this very limitation explains why more PRs are found in the Southern Hemisphere.
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