Entomologists analyzed the diet of dung beetles of the species Onthophagus orpheus, which inhabit urban forests in the American city of Worcester. It was found that these insects prefer domestic dog feces over cow dung.
Furthermore, using dog excrement gives the dung beetle's offspring an advantage: they develop faster and reach larger sizes. However, these positive aspects are offset by significantly higher mortality, which exceeds the norm by more than two and a half times.
As highlighted in the publication Ecology and Evolution, urban dung beetles have fallen into a so-called evolutionary trap. These insects adjusted their dietary habits to take advantage of the greater amount of resource available in the urban environment, but it turned out that this resource negatively affects the development of their offspring.