Whenever there is a pile of dung, most likely there are a dung beetle that is trying to roll a dung into a ball and roll it away, and buries it for the future use as a place for laying eggs. And this is also a source of food for them. Dung beetles are able to use the Milky way in the universe, witch is the galaxy we are located in that contains at least two hundred billions stars, in order to roll the dung in a very straight line. Dung beetles have an great authority on this ability, but sometimes they also mistaken this most important factor in their living habit, the dung. As many of the people know that plants are living creatures that can’t move that much and usually they need the help from wind or animals to reproduce. And sometimes, plants may use their appearance to attract the animals or insects to do the job.

(The seed)                                                         (The seed)                                 (herbivore faeces)

One of the most interesting case to me is a plant called Ceratocaryum argenteum, and it is the one fooled the dung beetle. it is a plant that’s discovered in De Hoop Nature Reserve in South Africa. And a research is conducted by Professor Jeremy Midgley and his team. The interesting part of this plant is that its seeds looks really like the dung that is brown, round, strongly scented. According to the article on Nature Plants that Jeremy wrote, “To the human nose the tuberculate layer has a pungent scent similar to herbivore faeces.” And it is used to attract the appearance of dung beetles for spreading and burying the seed in to other places for reproduce. By experiment of Jeremy and his team, they observe the truth that dung beetles sees these seeds as dungs and treats them the same way. Among 195 seeds they put on a specific spot, about 44 percent of the the seeds are moved within 24 hours, and about 87 percent of the seeds are later found buried under the ground for 2 centimeters. But there are no eggs laid or damage on the seeds shows how dung beetles found out the lie later on. However, the purpose of the plant is reached, and the offspring of the plant is now spread to other places.

However, dung beetles are not always involving in the progress of spreading the seeds, and in this case, it is only fooled by the plant. And different plants in different environment will have their own strategy. Because if there are too many herbivores in an area, the faeces will be enough for the dung beetles and the Ceratocaryum argenteum won’t be able to spread the seed as efficient as it can. “The vast majority of seed-dispersal strategies involve wind, water, hitchhiking, or luring animals with an honest reward,” Thor Hanson, the author of The Triumph of Seeds wrote. In the other places, some similar plants may use the smell of the flower just like female bees to attract the male bees to help the plant on the seed-dispersal strategy. But why and how plants are involved that way. In order to survive and spread more offsprings to more places, the plants evolved the skills of attracting animals or other skills such as using water or wind according to the environment and living creatures. According to the Biology of the seeds, besides using wind, water or animal, there are even special ways for plants to spread the seeds by shooting out the seeds just like the video below.

http://https://youtu.be/0A3__tuxlio

On the other hand, the shape and the smell of the seeds being similar to the faeces also benefit and protects the seed and the plant. In fact, the areas that Ceratocaryum argenteum located is full of small animals such as rats, and due to research continuously by Jeremy and his colleagues, because of the smell of this seed, it prevents itself to be eaten by other animals, which the rats will choose to eat other seeds and never even take a bite on the seeds of Ceratocaryum argenteum. This ability is evolved throughout billions of years, and it is similar to animals such as skunks preventing to be attacked or getting other dangers out of his ways.