As with humans, there can be different phenotypes for certain species of male dung beetles.
In the case of beetles from the genus Onthophagus, you have the burly jock Arnold Schwarzenegger he-man (or he-beetle) stereotype. He can easily be recognized by the fact that he is horny--both figuratively and literally. Arnold has no problem picking up women. When he does, he proudly digs a tunnel for his gal, furnishes it with a big ball of poop, and manfully guards the entrance with his horns.
There is also the Leonard Hofstadter physically inept, but freakishly intelligent, nerd stereotype dung beetle. Leonard does not have any horn (or, at best, only vestigial ones) and would not fair well at all in a direct confrontation with Arnold. Leonard has trouble convincing girl dung beetles to go home with him. In order to slake his bodily lusts, Leonard surreptitiously digs a tunnel of his own that intersects underground with Arnold's tunnel. While Arnold is still on sentry duty, Leonard is downstairs servicing Arnold's girlfriend and creating a whole new generation of nerd dung beetles. Of course, if Arnold does catch him, Leonard is, so to speak, in deep doo-doo.
For more insight on the sexual escapades of dung beetles, check out the Natural History Magazine website archives and scroll to the May, 2000 article Dig It and They Will Come.
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| Shawn Hanrahan, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons |
LEONARD (L.) AND ARNOLD (R.)
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