A few days ago I found this new beetle sitting on the wall of some local houses. It’s a member of the Hydrophilidae family of water scavenger beetles, though this is actually one of Sphaeridium species, which are dung beetles. The UK Beetles website reports that ‘four [of these species] occur in the UK and three are common and widespread, they are medium sized, 4-7.5 mm. oval and distinctively coloured, they live in wet dung and both adults and larvae are predatory’, and on Wikipedia I discovered that the larvae of these little beetles predate the larvae of flies that breed in dung. The particularly odd thing is the urban location where I found this beetle, as they’re usually found near cattle. Perhaps it had inadvertently hitched a ride in someone’s car or on someone’s dog.