The Stuff of Nightmares or Admiration?

Not everything I find on a nature walk is as sweet as baby ducks or butterflies. Some things are material for a Halloween horror movie. 

This is a dead baby rat of some kind, being investigated by an interesting black and orange undertaker called a burying beetle.

As bad as it looks, the beetle is not guilty of anything. It didn’t kill the little rodent, and I am not sure what did. It didn’t eat its face off, either. They just find the remains. Burying beetles around here are pretty quick when it comes to finding dead things, and they provide a valuable service while simultaneously serving their own interests.

This beautiful insect with a grisly occupation is of the species Nicrophorus carolina, and she (at least I think it is a she due to its behavior) was doing what burying beetles do best - trying to make a nursery for her future young buy digging a hole beneath the dead rodent into which it could fall, whereupon her eggs, deposited on it, could be covered with dirt and interred in the soil long enough for the beetles eggs to hatch and the larvae to feed on the carcass. The bigger the carcass the better, I suppose, because if a carcass is too small, it might not last long enough for the beetle’s young to complete their growth into the adult stage. 

The male normally stands guard while the female works, but I did not see him, which is a shame because burying beetles are rare in the insect world - they have excellent parenting skills. Both male and female can perform all the necessary tasks to rear young, even feeding their growing larvae with regurgitated carrion much as a bird would feed its young. They can also, if need be, do all the parenting alone.

I wondered if the exposed location may have caused him to get nabbed by a bird.

The beetle in front of me seemed flummoxed by the location- how could it bury the body when the carcass was on concrete? It seemed to be trying to drag the carcass over to the edge of the driveway into the grass, but it was a long distance. Or perhaps it was merely attempting to get beneath the carcass. It’s persistent but exhausting efforts were what caught my attention.

I picked it up and put it - and the deceased rodent - in a more sheltered location, and dug around in the soil a bit to make a depression suitable for a head start, hoping the beetle would have the strength left to finish the job. And a big job it is, because burying it is just the first step. The parents also prepare the carcass by detaining it or defeathering it, making it more accessible to their future offspring, and make a brood chamber to stay near the young and a feeding station where parents and young meet to eat.

Some, if not all of these burying beetles ( or sexton beetles as some call them) can excrete a chemical that acts as a preservative to make the chosen carcass last a bit longer than it otherwise would. 

This species is not that rare, but there is a similar burying beetle species, the American burying beetle, on the endangered species list.

I may or may not ever use the reference photos obtained from this encounter, but who knows? But opportunities like this are chances to investigate further and learn something new. That’s better than just looking away and saying “Eew!”

—-Susan Walton