Coprophagous insects consume and redigest the feces of large animals

These feces contain substantial amounts of semidigested food, particularly in the case of herbivores, owing to the inefficiency of the large animals' digestive systems. Thousands of species of coprophagous insects are known, especially among the orders Diptera and Coleoptera. Examples of such flies are Scathophaga stercoraria and Sepsis cynipsea, dung flies commonly found in Europe around cattle droppings.

Among beetles, dung beetles are a diverse lineage, many of which feed on the microorganism-rich liquid component of mammals' dung, and lay their eggs in balls composed mainly of the remaining fibrous material. Group living and aggregation among common earwigs promotes allo-coprophagy (consuming the feces of other members of one's own species) to promote the growth of helpful gut bacteria and provide a food source when food is scarce.