Abstract: The cuticle of dung beetle is a layered composite material in micro- or nano-scale. Dung beetle can fly, walk and dig. It can shovel and compact dung of mammals into balls. It use foreleg to walk, midleg and hindleg to hold and impel dung ball. Its two foreleges as digging legs are developed. The factors impacting the nanoindentation testing results of the femur cuticle of forelegs of dung beetle Copris ochus Motschulsky were examined. The nanomechanical test instrument used for the tests was Hysitron nanomechanical system. The results shown that the holding time and loading time are important factors im-pacting the accuracy of such indentation properties as reduced modulus (E_r) and the harness ( H ) of the femur cuticle of the forelegs of dung beetle Copris ochus Motschulsky in nanoscale. There exists a threshold holding time of 20 s for the reduced modulus of the femur cuticle. The tests of nanoindentation creep property and the regression analysis of relationship between the depth increment at the maximum load and the time further confirmed the correction of the above threshold holding time. There exist visco-elastic-plastic behaviour and creep phenomenon in the femur cuticle during indenting. Its creep property during the holding procedure at maximum load can be regressed by a general logarithmic equation. The equation fitted by the testing data is Δh = 54.834 52 ln(0.007 23t +1.004 86), where, Δh is the depth increment at the maximum load and t is the time.

Key words: dung beetle, insect, cuticle, nanoindentation, holding time, loading time, creep