Aphodius Beetle?

[Ledian]

Last night, in through my open window, I received a new and interesting guest. A shiny black beetle. Its wings were red. When it landed, with its wings now hidden, it kept trying to burrow into my carpet without much success. I've never witnessed such a thing before, so rather than chuck him out, I lifted him onto one of my house plants. As soon as he hit the moist dark soil, he took to it like a duck to water, burrowed deeply into it never to be seen again.

So the facts are: It flies at night, it burrows with the best of them, it has a strong shovel-shaped head with which to burrow, it is all shiny black with hidden red or orange wings, it is about 15 mm long, 5 mm across. According to my bug book, I'm fairly certain it's in the Aphodius genus. Does anyone know anything about this genus and think it sounds right, or know of any other similar genus the beetle might belong to?

Sorry there is no photos but I just don't have a good enough camera.

[MattPrince]

Aphodius often come to moth traps, and your sizing is about the upper limit for one of the commonest aphodius rufipes. They are dung beetles and can often be found rooting about in cow pats!

I've found a few of them lately (huge numbers on a recent mothing event) and they are unbelievably strong for their size.

Fraid that's all I've got

Cheers,
Matt

[Ledian]

Oh that's most adequate thank you Matthew I feel much better now :-).

Yes I noticed there strength! I could hear the noise of it picking at the threads of the carpet. It got tangled in a thread, and then it pulled back so hard that the thread snapped and it tumbled a few centermetres across the floor.