The leetle Beetle

 So there I was on the bus.  It was early in the morning, and you can see what day it was by the date on my newspaper...that's right.  Wednesday morning and the sun was beaming from the side windows making it quite difficult for me to read the news, so I laid the paper on my lap and in an instant, a flyer dropped down to take a look.  It was a beetle of course.  Why not?  Did you know that beetles as a species, take up over 25% of all known life forms?  In fact 40% of all insects species are ... beetles.  So it's no wonder that one of 400,000 species decided to land on my newspaper today!  But what kind of beetle was it?  Well that was the hard part in determining.  So after doing the best I could to narrow down the possibilities, I came up with 'the Scarab beetle' which is common in North America.  If you can do better than me, feel free to write me and I will post your name with your finding on my blog!  So now I had to put aside the paper, and find out more about the beetle.  It goes through stages much like most insects.  First the female lays the eggs from several dozen to several thousand, to the larvae stage (which can last for several years) and then the Pupa to Adult.  The adults lifespan can go from weeks or years depending on the species.  After a little more reading I find the scarab beetle specifically enjoys a diet of decaying organic matter, which include dung (poo) and with that I placed the newspaper by the window and set him free :)