The horned dung beetle has been crowned World’s Strongest Insect, but a new study finds that literally having big balls can make up for a lack of brawn.

According to a new Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper, the dung beetle species Onthophagus taurus can pull a load 1,141 times its own body weight, equivalent to a Nature reporter lifting 30 male elephant seals.

“Insects are well known for being able to perform amazing feats of strength, and it’s all on account of their curious sex lives,” says author Rob Knell from Queen Mary University of London in a press release. He and Leigh Simmons from The University of Western Australia in Crawley spent months subjecting the insects to “grueling trials” in order to understand different mating tactics and why strength varies.

Males with long-horns guard females within tunnels beneath dung pats, fight with intruding rivals, and mate repeatedly with the females they guard, the paper says. “If a male enters a tunnel that is already occupied by a rival, they fight by locking horns and try to push each other out,” Knell explains.

The scientists also found these insect athletes need to pay just as much attention to their diet as human athletes. The strongest beetles were reduced to feeble weaklings when fed a poor diet for a few days. Horned fighters put their resources into strength, allowing them to win fights and monopolise females. But they do not invest so much in testes.

Short-horned ‘minor’ males take a different approach. They don’t fight over females, instead, they sneak around mating with females when they get left on their lonesome. Rather than brute force, they rely on fast walking and large testes to fulfil their biological imperative.

Their substantially bigger testicles for their body size “suggests they sneak behind the back of the other male, waiting until he’s looking the other way for a chance to mate with the female”, Knell says (press release). “Instead of growing super-strength to fight for a female, they grow lots more sperm to increase their chances of fertilising her eggs and fathering the next generation.”