Adults are roughly 15–25 mm long, with the horn making large males much longer overall.
Fine-art photographic collection
Onthophagus mouhoti
A beetle whose extraordinarily long forked horn is packed beneath the larval skin as a pre-folded biological origami structure.
About this species
Onthophagus mouhotiHarold, 1875
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Onthophagus mouhoti is a Southeast Asian dung beetle remarkable for the long bifurcated head horn of large males. Like other horned scarabs, the adult weapon is assembled during metamorphosis from a compact folded primordium.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Scarabaeidae · Cetoniinae · Onthophagus
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Mainland Southeast AsiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Mainland Southeast Asia
Tropical forest and forest-edge dung resources.
Adults locate dung, excavate and provision underground brood chambers.
Dung and other vertebrate waste.
Pairs or individual females provision brood balls; not a permanent colony.
What makes this species remarkable?
The adult horn is longer than the space available beneath the larval head capsule, so the future weapon begins as a densely folded sheet that expands at metamorphosis.
Its horn is not merely long but deeply forked, and developmental modelling uses the O. mouhoti shape as an example of how changing a folding programme can produce an entirely different three-dimensional weapon.
The beetle converts a temporary pile of dung into buried, measured food parcels for its offspring, moving nutrients underground while simultaneously removing waste from the forest surface.
Sources and scientific references
- GBIF — taxon record/search for Onthophagus mouhoti
- Catalogue of Life — taxon search for Onthophagus mouhoti
- Scientific Reports — biological origami and the O. mouhoti-like horn form
- Biodiversity Heritage Library taxonomic record for Onthophagus mouhoti
- Scarabaeinae Research Network — dung beetle nesting and functional biology