Boreocanthon praticola

Boreocanthon praticola (formerly Canthon praticola) · Order: Coleoptera · Family: Scarabaeidae

No source yet on danger. We have no source yet on whether it bites, stings or damages anything.
Boreocanthon praticola
Photo: Sandra Keller, CC BY, cropped

Boreocanthon praticola is a dung beetle in the scarab family.

Source: Wikipedia

How to recognize it

Boreocanthon praticola is a dung beetle in the scarab family.

Source: Wikipedia

What it eats

It prefers prairie-dog dung but will also use dung from cattle, bison, pigs, humans, and rabbits.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it comes from

It is native to the Great Plains of North America, ranging from southern Canada to Texas, and into the Southwest and northwestern Mexico.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it is found in the US

Recorded in 5 of 51 states and DC. Most records: Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oklahoma.

Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.

Source: GBIF

Months it is reported in the US

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Source: GBIF

Same family (Scarabaeidae)

Sources

  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreocanthon_praticola

Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · Wikipedia

Text written 2026-10-24 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-24.

How this page works

This is one bug's fact sheet. The colored box at the top says whether it is dangerous. Sections below cover how to recognize it, whether it is a pest, and how to deal with it. The US map shows which states have records; tap a state to see other bugs there.

Every fact on Bug FAQ comes from a named source (university extension sites, government agencies, GBIF, iNaturalist, Wikipedia). The source is linked next to each section. If we have no source for something, we leave it out.