Scarabaeus sacer is the most famous of the scarab beetles. To the Ancient Egyptians, this dung beetle was a symbol of Khepri, the early morning manifestation of the sun god Ra, from an analogy between the beetles behaviour of rolling a ball of dung across the ground and Khepris task of rolling the sun across the sky. They accordingly held the species to be sacred. The Egyptians also observed young beetles emerging from the ball of dung, from which they mistakenly inferred that the male beetle was able to reproduce without needing a female, simply by injecting his sperm into the ball of dung. From this, they drew parallels with their god Atum, who also begat children alone.