This not only makes the world a nicer, and distinctly less smelly place to live in, but also reduces the numbers of other insects like flies which also like to breed in dung and helps in the recycling of soil nutrients. It is not surprising therefore that most of the dung beetles in the world use herbivore dung, though many are not very particular and will use many different forms of dung, Aphodius fimetarius a common species in Britain and Europe can be found in sheep, horse and cow dung. Some species have definite preferences for one type of dung only, and Geotrupes stercorarius is only commonly found in cow dung, while in Southern Europe Aphodius bonnairi is a specialist on rabbit dung and Onthophagus caenobita has only ever been found feeding in human faeces. Just about every sort of dung is used by some dung beetle somewhere, Reptile, Amphibian, Bird and even other insect dung is rolled up and buried or eaten by these industrious little workers. Strangest of all to my mind though is a dung beetle in South America called Zonocopris gibbicolis which feeds on the faeces of large snails on whom it rides around Dung beetles can be conveniently divided into 3 groups, Rollers, Tunnellers and Dwellers.
Rollers are far more successful in the tropics than they are in temperate areas.
Rollers are species who make a burrow some way away from the dung they are going to use and then collect small to medium sized lumps of dung to role away from the source and into their burrows. We only have one 'Roller' in Britain, this is Typhaeus typhoeus the Minotaur Beetle, this amazing animal can dig burrows up to one metre deep. Mostly it likes to work with sheep and rabbit dung, it is very active through the wet winter months but spends the hot summer dry asleep under the ground. Generally the female does most of the digging and the male spends most of his time collecting the dung for her. Down in her tunnel she digs a number of side burrows each of which she fills with dung and then lays one egg in before back filling the burrow a bit more with soil.