What Is The World’s Strongest Insect?

Posted on April 5, 2010 with No Comments

It took months of test, a grueling process that settled the question once and for all. The strongest insect in the world is Onthophagus taurus, a species of horned dung beetle. The beetle can 1,141 times its own body weight. This is the same as if a 150 pound person were to life 6 double-decker buses. These beetles don’t carry balls of dung, instead they bury cow dung. There are two types, a horned version and non horned version. The horned version fight with each to determine if they should mate or not, while the non horned waits for its opportunity and sneaks in to mate.

The scientists tied a piece of cotton to the beetles in order to determine the strength. Once the beetle got into the tunnel, they would pull on the string. They also varied how well they fed the beetle. When they fed the horned beetles well, they got much stronger than the poorly fed horned beetle. When they fed the non horned beetle well, they grew much larger testes, didn’t get much stronger, than the poorly fed non horned beetles. They said this happened due to genes.

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