Ladies and gentlemen, the beetles! Dung beetles, that is. If it’s been a hard day’s night for you, consider what these poor guys go through. They spend their lives crawling in manure, and yet they’ve found a way to thrive, by exploiting the stuff that mammals’ bodies get rid of. They’re nature’s recycling engineers.

Our guest, Dr. Nicole Gunter, is an expert on the lifestyles and evolution of dung beetles. Dr. Gunter is an entomologist and the collections manager of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Department of Invertebrate Zoology.

She’s spent years studying dung beetles in her native Australia and other international locations. She’s discovered some surprising things about when and how they first appeared on Earth. She’ll tell us about how dung beetles have inspired ancient art and mythology, about their surprising navigational abilities, and why anyone who’s enjoyed an outdoor meal or a beer Down Under has dung beetles to thank.