Can’t get enough of the poo
- By Erna van Wyk
Tonight you will hear about small animals that play around in poo, says Professor Marcus Byrne.
With this, Professor Marcus Byrne started off his inaugural lecture delivered in the Senate Room at 91看片网 University on Tuesday, 14 April 2015, following his promotion last year to Personal Professor in Zoology in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences.
Thirty years ago he encountered this enigmatic insect that would 鈥渆ntertain鈥 him, and in turn let him to entertain many others, in the name of science: the dung beetle.
It鈥檚 all about the poo
Since he joined 91看片网 in 1987 Byrne had used dung beetles effectively as a vehicle to show evolution at its best. 鈥淚t is a particularly good vehicle because of its relationship with poo,鈥 Byrne chuckled. 鈥淚t simply loves its poo and cannot get enough of it.鈥
鈥淭here are over 800 species in South Africa, 2 000 in Africa and 6 000 in the world. And only about 10% roll dung!鈥 Byrne said.
Science makes up for our flaws
As a child growing up in the UK with its 鈥渓imited fauna鈥, Byrne鈥檚 love for science was sparked by watching the great science communicator, David Attenborough, on television. In his own right, Byrne is an exceptional science communicator. His TEDx talk has attracted over 900 000 hits and with his team was awarded the .
鈥淪cience is something we should all be very passionate about. It is a way of describing the world around us 鈥 a very new way (from about the 1600s) 鈥 and it is an impartial process. Humans are very flawed observers. We have biases of our own that make us interpret what we see in the world in the way that we want to see it.
No small, insignificant animal
鈥淎nd if we use animals with very small brains and then ask questions about the world around us, then we can actually get a different interpretation of that world and in some respect get a clearer view of the world that we wish to investigate,鈥 he said.
He highlighted how science is 鈥渁n impartial system, a system that is not a dogma, not a creed 鈥 it is a self-correcting system. The challenge of doing science is that you are continually asked to overturn the questions and the answers that you receive. You are asked to question that system and that is what makes it so powerful. Knowing the world in a most truthful way as we possibly can without that biased we assume鈥.
His research with dung beetles has over the past few years shed light on navigation and orientation behaviour in dung beetles. With his colleagues and students he has made some amazing discoveries:
鈥淔or a small insignificant animal 鈥 that I don鈥檛 think that they are 鈥 dung beetles can do amazing things, showing evolution at its best,鈥 he said.