Ok there was not enough time spent on my highlight of the trip so here goes my side of the story. As you know we were all very excited/disappointed that out "kill" was some Masai dogs injuring a wildebeest. We were anxiously awaiting the lions and the hyenas. Dumas told us that the lions would not get involved because they liked to take the kill down themselves....very picky, and the hyenas could be hours. Mike looked to the skies in hope of vultures, Mary to the horizon for hyenas, Maggie to have a chat with Kenya, her wild cat, and me to the ground to see the pretty pebbles of dirt. Why I was looking at the ground during this very exciting time I have no idea.

I grabbed the ganogulars to check out the movement I saw...low and behold it was a dung beetle pushing dung and his mistress across town. I had watched a National Geographic film on the Serengeti years ago and was fascinated by this creature.

Ancient Egyptians revered the scarab (dung beetle). They credited it with keeping the earth revolving like a giant ball of dung. Much earlier than the Egyptians, 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, dung beetles were revered by Shamanic cultures, often as The Creator.

There are three main types of dung beetles: the rollers, the tunnelers and the dwellers that live in the dung. They generally follow mammals by flying upwind towards the scent of dung. Their sense of smell is acute and their eyes are divided in half for ground vision and polarized light vision. Dung beetles are usually solitary apart from the short time they spend with their partners prior to mating.

The rollers establish a pair bond. They usually meet in the dung pat. The male offers the female a giant-sized brood ball which if accepted, they roll away together, or with the female riding on the ball. During this time, other beetles often attempt to steel the ball. They find a soft place and bury the ball before mating - mostly underground. The male then leaves to find further partners. The female of this species makes a brood 'pear' or 'pears' and lays a single egg in each. She then coats the pear with an antiseptic mixture of dung, saliva and feces to seal it in a case, which hardens, solid. Unusual in insects, this species exhibits the highest level of parental care seen in an insect. She stays with the ball and her grub for two months, cleaning it and removing its feces, fungi and bacteria.

If this is how you start life it can only get better right?! Digging and eating your way out of feces, and you thought you had it bad.

Up to 16,000 dung beetles have been counted in one 1.5kg heap of elephant dung. One dung beetle can bury 250 times its own weight in a night.

The beetles may measure up to 57 mm in length and 33 mm in width. The wingspan may exceed 135 mm, and the brood balls in which the larvae develop may measure up to 103 mm in diameter, almost double their size.
Many African dung beetles have been exported to Australia where they were needed to break up dung pads in which flies were breeding.

More info than you ever wanted to know about, right? Well you can see them in action at this website: http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/animals/video/beetle_dung.html

So I get out of the car and start to take some close ups of this amazing find. The other jeep is wondering what is so exciting, find out it is dung beetles, they are still wondering what is so exciting. Mary starts chatting with them and they are from Cambridge, MA small world.

Well as Mary decides to switch her ganogular to the wildebeest and dogs and forgo the hopeless search for hyenas she exclamations your dung beetles just rolled in front of my binoculars. I looked back to the spot where they were first seen and could not see them at all. They (he, she was just holding on for dear life) had pushed that ball of dung from the road to the wildebeest. I am not good with distances and I know I exaggerate but it must have been.............really really really far away.