Why is the dung-beetle also called the dorr?
Because, in old times, dorr was a stupid,blundering fellow; and, to dorr, was to ding or trouble with noise; both meanings applicable to the heedless flight, and loud noise, made in all the transits of this dung beetle. Such is the conjecture of Mr. Knapp, in his Journal of a Naturalist, who also speaks of dung beetles as clocks – ” as the boys call them, a corruption, he thinks, from cloax, a vault, a creature from below, which might signify its subterranean residence.” Or, burrowing in the filth and ordure, as it does, the epithet clocca, the offspring of a common shore, or jakes, would not have been insignificant of its origin and habits.
