please tell/write me that they're not ticks
i wasn't able to see clearly at that moment but when i looked at the photo back home, i saw these. Only today we removed 2 ticks and it's becoming disturbingly regular. If these are ticks on only one dung beetle, we are damned :/
Those are mites, or more specifically Mesostigmatid mites. They are hitchhikers frequently found on insects associated with dung or carrion. These resources tend to be very patchy in the environment and mites are so tiny they can't disperse well by themselves, so they take advantage of beetles, flies, millipedes etc. to get there faster. These mites are predators that feed on worms or other small critters, they're not parasites.
Looks like your beetle has at least two mite species on it: the lighter ones with two separate dorsal shields likely belong to the genus Poecilochirus, and the darker ones with undivided dorsal shields are unfamiliar to me. They might belong in the family Macrochelidae.
thank the flying spaghetti monster, they won't bother us until we die
thank you too, for the identification
I'm taking a wild guess but I think it's a large group of beetle mites?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oribatida
Edit: also this:
https://askentomologists.com/2020/09/03/why-are-burying-beetles-covered-in-mites/
thanks for the links
Ticks do not use any other food source than vertebrate blood and therefore ingest high levels of protein, iron and salt, but few carbohydrates, lipids or vitamins.
then they can't be ticks?