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Sticker of Sacred scarab
Bug card No. 1187 of 1,500

Sacred scarab

Scarabaeus sacer
Eats: Leftovers and dead thingsBeetlesDeserts and dry places6 legs

The sacred scarab is a strong, all-black dung beetle. It rolls balls of animal poo across the ground, pushing them with its back legs. Long ago, the people of ancient Egypt thought it was a holy animal.

Lives in
Southern Europe, North Africa and West Asia, often in sandy dunes near the sea
Length
1.9 to 4 cm (0.75 to 1.6 in)
Top speed
about 0.82 km/h (0.51 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is busy with its dung ball and does not bite people.
What does it eat?
It eats animal dung. It rolls a dung ball into an underground room and spends several days eating it.
For real!Photo of Sacred scarab
Picture by Sarefo. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Sacred scarab about 4 cm long (1.6 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 7 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 4.4 seconds

How big is Sacred scarab compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its head has six spikes that look like the rays of the sun. With the spikes on its front legs, there are 14 rays.

2

Its front legs have no feet at the end. They work like little rakes for digging and shaping dung.

3

A mother makes a special pear-shaped dung ball and lays just one egg inside. The baby eats the ball as it grows.

4

A mother scarab has only about six babies in her whole life.

5

The Egyptians thought a god rolled the sun across the sky just like the scarab rolls its ball.

you asked

Most asked questions about Sacred scarab

?Why was the scarab sacred in Egypt?

Rolling its dung ball reminded Egyptians of their sun god rolling the sun across the sky.

?What does a sacred scarab eat?

Animal dung. Both the grown-ups and the babies eat it.

?How big is a sacred scarab?

About 2 to 4 centimetres long.

Myth buster

Myth: Scarab beetles are born from dung without a mother.

Truth: The ancient Egyptians believed this because they saw young beetles crawl out of dung balls. Really, a mother beetle laid an egg inside the ball.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Scarabaeus sacer
Named by
Linnaeus, 1758
Group
Beetles
Family
Scarabaeidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
Lives on
Europe, Africa, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Scarabaeus sacer (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Sarefo. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

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