Some male tunnel-diggers avoid conflict by masquerading as hornless females.

Some male tunnelers avoid the fray by masquerading as hornless females and sneaking into tunnels to mate while the guardians’ heads are turned. The third group of dung beetles, dwellers, take the most straightforward approach, laying their eggs directly into a dung pat. This makes their offspring more vulnerable to predation than those of the tunnelers and rollers. As the larvae feed, they riddle the dung pat with tunnels, leaving remains that are quickly colonized by bacteria and fungi and weathered away. Inside a tunnel, ball, or pat, once the larvae hatch, they consume the dung before metamorphosing into a pupa and then an adult beetle.