THE BURYING-BEETLES: THE BURIAL
Beside the footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the
peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has
stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green,
pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious
deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of
wind has thrown a tiny unfledged bird from its nest. What will become
of these little bodies and so many other pitiful remnants of life?
They will not long offend our sense of sight and smell. The sanitary
officers of the fields are legion.
An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come
hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon
the odour attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the
same time, the flattened Silpha,[1] the glistening, slow-trotting
Cellar-beetle, the Dermestes,[2] powdered with snow upon the abdomen,
and the slender Staphylinus,[3] all, whence coming no one knows, hurry
hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and
draining the infection.
[Footnote 1: Or Carrion-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]
[Footnote 2: Or Bacon-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]
[Footnote 3: Or Rove-beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]
What a spectacle, in the spring, beneath a dead Mole! The horror of
this laboratory is a beautiful sight for one who is able to observe
and to meditate. Let us overcome our disgust; let us turn over the
unclean refuse with our foot. What a swarming there is beneath it,
what a tumult of busy workers! The Silphae, with wing-cases wide and
dark, as though in mourning, flee distraught, hiding in the cracks in
the soil; the Saprini,[4] of polished ebony which mirrors the
sunlight, jog hastily off, deserting their workshop; the Dermestes, of
whom one wears a fawn-coloured tippet flecked with white, seek to fly
away, but, tipsy with the putrid nectar, tumble over and reveal the
immaculate whiteness of their bellies, which forms a violent contrast
with the gloom of the rest of their attire.
[Footnote 4: The Saprinus is a very small carnivorous Beetle. Cf. _The
Life of the Fly_: chap. xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]
What were they doing there, all these feverish workers? They were
making a clearance of death on behalf of life. Transcendent
alchemists, they were transforming that horrible putrescence into a
living and inoffensive product. They were draining the dangerous
corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains
of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter
and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the
carrion innocuous.
Others will soon put in their appearance, smaller creatures and more
patient, who will take over the relic and exploit it ligament by
ligament, bone by bone, hair by hair, until the whole has been
restored to the treasury of life. All honour to these purifiers! Let
us put back the Mole and go our way.
Some other victim of the agricultural labours of spring, a
Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide
us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil.
This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the
cadaveric mob in dress and habits. In honour of his exalted functions
he exhales an odour of musk; he bears a red tuft at the tip of his
antennae; his breast is covered with nankeen; and across his
wing-cases he wears a double, scalloped scarf of vermillion. An
elegant, almost sumptuous costume, very superior to that of the
others, but yet lugubrious, as befits your undertaker's man.
He is no anatomical dissector, cutting his subject open, carving its
flesh with the scalpel of his mandibles; he is literally a
grave-digger, a sexton. While the others--Silphae, Dermestes,
Cellar-beetles--gorge themselves with the exploited flesh, without, of
course, forgetting the interests of the family, he, a frugal eater,
hardly touches his find on his own account. He buries it entire, on
the spot, in a cellar where the thing, duly ripened, will form the
diet of his larvae. He buries it in order to establish his progeny.
This hoarder of dead bodies, with his stiff and almost heavy
movements, is astonishingly quick at storing away wreckage. In a shift
of a few hours, a comparatively enormous animal, a Mole, for instance,
disappears, engulfed by the earth. The others leave the dried, emptied
carcass to the air, the sport of the winds for months on end; he,
treating it as a whole, makes a clean job of things at once. No
visible trace of his work remains but a tiny hillock, a burial-mound,
a tumulus.
With his expeditious method, the Necrophorus is the first of the
little purifiers of the fields. He is also one of the most celebrated
of insects in respect of his psychical capacities. This undertaker is
endowed, they say, with intellectual faculties approaching to reason,
such as are not possessed by the most gifted of the Bees and Wasps,
the collectors of honey or game. He is honoured by the two following
anecdotes, which I quote from Lacordaire's[5] _Introduction a
l'entomologie_, the only general treatise at my disposal:
"Clairville," says the author, "reports that he saw a _Necrophorus
vespillo_, who, wishing to bury a dead Mouse and finding the soil on
which the body lay too hard, went to dig a hole at some distance, in
soil more easily displaced. This operation completed, he attempted to
bury the Mouse in the cavity, but, not succeeding, he flew away and
returned a few moments later, accompanied by four of his fellows, who
assisted him to move the Mouse and bury it."
[Footnote 5: Jean Theodore Lacordaire (1801-1870), author of _Genera
des coleopteres_ (1854-1876) and of the work quoted above
(1837-1839).--_Translator's Note_.]
In such actions, Lacordaire adds, we cannot refuse to admit the
intervention of reason.
"The following case," he continues, "recorded by Gleditsch,[6] has
also every indication of the intervention of reason. One of his
friends, wishing to desiccate a Frog, placed it on the top of a stick
thrust into the ground, in order to make sure that the Necrophori
should not come and carry it off. But this precaution was of no
effect; the insects, being unable to reach the Frog, dug under the
stick and, having caused it to fall, buried it as well as the
body."[7]
[Footnote 6: Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch (1714-1786), the German
botanist.--_Translator's Note_.]
[Footnote 7: _Suites a Buffon. Introduction a l'entomologie_, vol.
ii., pp. 460-61.--_Author's Note_.]
To grant, in the intellect of the insect, a lucid understanding of the
relations between cause and effect, between the end and the means, is
to make a statement of serious import. I know of scarcely any more
suited to the philosophical brutalities of my time. But are these two
anecdotes really true? Do they involve the consequences deduced from
them? Are not those who accept them as sound evidence just a little
too simple?
To be sure, simplicity is needed in entomology. Without a good dose of
this quality, a mental defect in the eyes of practical folk, who would
busy himself with the lesser creatures? Yes, let us be simple, without
being childishly credulous. Before making insects reason, let us
reason a little ourselves; let us, above all, consult the experimental
test. A fact gathered at random, without criticism, cannot establish a
law.
I do not propose, O valiant grave-diggers, to depreciate your merits;
such is far from being my intention. I have that in my notes, on the
other hand, which will do you more honour than the story of the gibbet
and the Frog; I have gleaned, for your benefit, examples of prowess
which will shed a new lustre upon your reputation.
No, my intention is not to belittle your renown. Besides, it is not
the business of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it
follows facts. I wish simply to question you upon the power of logic
attributed to you. Do you or do you not enjoy gleams of reason? Have
you within you the humble germ of human thought? That is the problem
before us.
To solve it we will not rely upon the accidents which good fortune may
now and again procure for us. We must employ the breeding-cage, which
will permit of assiduous visits, continuous enquiry and a variety of
artifices. But how to stock the cage? The land of the olive-tree is
not rich in Necrophori. To my knowledge it possesses only a single
species, _N. vestigator_, HERSCH.; and even this rival of the
grave-diggers of the north is pretty scarce. The discovery of three or
four in the spring was as much as my hunting-expeditions yielded in
the old days. This time, if I do not resort to the ruses of the
trapper, I shall obtain no more than that, whereas I stand in need of
at least a dozen.
These ruses are very simple. To go in search of the sexton, who exists
only here and there in the country-side, would be nearly always a
waste of time; the favourable month, April, would be past before my
cage was suitably stocked. To run after him is to trust too much to
accident; so we will make him come to us by scattering in the orchard
an abundant collection of dead Moles. To this carrion, ripened by the
sun, the insect will not fail to hasten from the various points of the
horizon, so accomplished is he in detecting such a delicacy.
I make an arrangement with a gardener in the neighbourhood, who, two
or three times a week, makes up for the penury of my two acres of
stony ground by providing me with vegetables raised in a better soil.
I explain to him my urgent need of Moles in unlimited numbers.
Battling daily with trap and spade against the importunate excavator
who uproots his crops, he is in a better position than any one to
procure for me what I regard for the moment as more precious than his
bunches of asparagus or his white-heart cabbages.
The worthy man at first laughs at my request, being greatly surprised
by the importance which I attribute to the abhorrent animal, the
_Darboun_; but at last he consents, not without a suspicion at the
back of his mind that I am going to make myself a gorgeous winter
waist-coat with the soft, velvety skins of the Moles. A thing like
that must be good for pains in the back. Very well. We settle the
matter. The essential thing is that the _Darbouns_ reach me.
They reach me punctually, by twos, by threes, by fours, packed in a
few cabbage-leaves, at the bottom of the gardener's basket. The
excellent fellow who lent himself with such good grace to my strange
wishes will never guess how much comparative psychology will owe him!
In a few days I was the possessor of thirty Moles, which were
scattered here and there, as they reached me, in bare spots of the
orchard, among the rosemary-bushes, the strawberry-trees and the
lavender-beds.
Now it only remained to wait and to examine, several times a day, the
under-side of my little corpses, a disgusting task which any one would
avoid whose veins were not filled with the sacred fire of enthusiasm.
Only little Paul, of all the household, lent me the aid of his nimble
hand to seize the fugitives. I have already said that the entomologist
needs simplicity of mind. In this important business of the
Necrophori, my assistants were a small boy and an illiterate.
Little Paul's visits alternating with mine, we had not long to wait.
The four winds of heaven bore forth in all directions the odour of the
carrion; and the undertakers hurried up, so that the experiments,
begun with four subjects, were continued with fourteen, a number not
attained during the whole of my previous searches, which were
unpremeditated and in which no bait was used as decoy. My trapper's
ruse was completely successful.
Before I report the results obtained in the cage, let us stop for a
moment to consider the normal conditions of the labours that fall to
the lot of the Necrophori. The Beetle does not select his head of
game, choosing one in proportion to his strength, as do the Hunting
Wasps; he accepts what chance offers. Among his finds some are small,
such as the Shrew-mouse; some medium-sized, such as the Field-mouse;
some enormous, such as the Mole, the Sewer-rat and the Snake, any of
which exceeds the digging-powers of a single sexton. In the majority
of cases, transportation is impossible, so greatly disproportioned is
the burden to the motive-power. A slight displacement, caused by the
effort of the insects' backs, is all that can possibly be effected.
Ammophila and Cerceris,[8] Sphex and Pompilus excavate their burrows
wherever they please; they carry their prey on the wing, or, if too
heavy, drag it afoot. The Necrophorus knows no such facilities in his
task. Incapable of carting the monstrous corpse, no matter where
encountered, he is forced to dig the grave where the body lies.
[Footnote 8: Cf. _The Hunting Wasps_: chaps. i. to iii.--_Translator's
Note_.]
This obligatory place of sepulture may be in stony soil or in shifting
sand; it may occupy this or that bare spot, or some other where the
grass, especially the couch-grass, plunges into the ground its
inextricable network of little cords. There is a great probability,
too, that a bristle of stunted brambles may be supporting the body at
some inches above the soil. Slung by the labourer's spade, which has
just broken his back, the Mole falls here, there, anywhere, at random;
and where the body falls, no matter what the obstacles, provided that
they be not insurmountable, there the undertaker must utilize it.
The difficulties of inhumation are capable of such variety as causes
us already to foresee that the Necrophorus cannot employ fixed methods
in performing his task. Exposed to fortuitous hazards, he must be able
to modify his tactics within the limits of his modest discernment. To
saw, to break, to disentangle, to lift, to shake, to displace: these
are so many means which are indispensable to the grave-digger in a
predicament. Deprived of these resources, reduced to uniformity of
procedure, the insect would be incapable of pursuing its calling.
We see at once how imprudent it would be to draw conclusions from an
isolated case in which rational co-ordination or premeditated
intention might appear to play its part. Every instinctive action no
doubt has its motive; but does the animal in the first place judge
whether the action is opportune? Let us begin by a careful
consideration of the creature's labours; let us support each piece of
evidence by others; and then we shall perhaps be able to answer the
question.
First of all, a word as to diet. A general scavenger, the
Burying-beetle refuses no sort of cadaveric putrescence. All is good
to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do
not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile
with no less animation. He accepts without hesitation extraordinary
finds, probably unknown to his race, as witness a certain Goldfish, a
red Chinese Carp, whose body, placed in one of my cages, was forthwith
considered an excellent tit-bit and buried according to the rules. Nor
is butcher's meat despised. A mutton-cutlet, a strip of beef-steak, in
the right stage of maturity, disappeared beneath the soil, receiving
the same attentions as those lavished on the Mole or the Mouse. In
short, the Necrophorus has no exclusive preferences; anything putrid
he conveys underground.
The maintenance of his industry, therefore, presents no sort of
difficulty. If one kind of game be lacking, some other, the first to
hand, will very well replace it. Nor is there much trouble in fixing
the site of his industry. A capacious wire-gauze cover, resting on an
earthen pan filled to the brim with fresh, heaped sand, is sufficient.
To obviate criminal attempts on the part of the Cats, whom the game
would not fail to tempt, the cage is installed in a closed
glass-house, which in winter shelters the plants and in summer serves
as an entomological laboratory.
Now to work. The Mole lies in the centre of the enclosure. The soil,
easily shifted and homogeneous, realizes the best conditions for
comfortable work. Four Necrophori, three males and a female, are there
with the body. They remain invisible, hidden beneath the carcase,
which from time to time seems to return to life, shaken from end to
end by the backs of the workers. An observer not in the secret would
be somewhat astonished to see the dead creature move. From time to
time, one of the sextons, almost always a male, comes out and walks
round the animal, which he explores, probing its velvet coat. He
hurriedly returns, appears again, once more investigates and creeps
back under the corpse.
The tremors become more pronounced; the carcase oscillates, while a
cushion of sand, pushed out from below, grows up all around it. The
Mole, by reason of his own weight and the efforts of the
grave-diggers, who are labouring at their task underneath, gradually
sinks, for lack of support, into the undermined soil.
Presently the sand which has been pushed out quivers under the thrust
of the invisible miners, slips into the pit and covers the interred
Mole. It is a clandestine burial. The body seems to disappear of
itself, as though engulfed by a fluid medium. For a long time yet,
until the depth is regarded as sufficient, the body will continue to
descend.
It is, on the whole, a very simple operation. As the diggers below
deepen the cavity into which the corpse, shaken and tugged above,
sinks without the direct intervention of the sextons, the grave fills
of itself by the mere slipping of the soil. Stout shovels at the tips
of their claws, powerful backs, capable of creating a little
earthquake: the diggers need nothing more for the practice of their
profession. Let us add--for this is an essential point--the art of
continually jerking the body, so as to pack it into a lesser volume
and make it glide through difficult passages. We shall soon see that
this art plays a leading part in the industry of the Necrophori.
Although he has disappeared, the Mole is still far from having reached
his destination. Let us leave the undertakers to finish their job.
What they are now doing below ground is a continuation of what they
did on the surface and would teach us nothing new. We will wait for
two or three days.
The moment has come. Let us inform ourselves of what is happening down
there. Let us visit the place of corruption. I shall never invite
anybody to the exhumation. Of those about me, only little Paul has the
courage to assist me.
The Mole is a Mole no longer, but a greenish horror, putrid, hairless,
shrunk into a sort of fat, greasy rasher. The thing must have
undergone careful manipulation to be thus condensed into a small
volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so
completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure
undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the
fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to
putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these
exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless
and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and
tail-feathers. Reptiles and fish, on the other hand, retain their
scales.
Let us return to the unrecognizable thing that was once a Mole. The
tit-bit lies in a spacious crypt, with firm walls, a regular workshop,
worthy of being the bake-house of a Copris. Except for the fur, which
lies scattered about in flocks, it is intact. The grave-diggers have
not eaten into it: it is the patrimony of the sons, not the provision
of the parents, who, to sustain themselves, levy at most a few
mouthfuls of the ooze of putrid humours.
Beside the dish which they are kneading and protecting are two
Necrophori; a couple, no more. Four collaborated in the burial. What
has become of the other two, both males? I find them hidden in the
soil, at a distance, almost on the surface.
This observation is not an isolated one. Whenever I am present at a
funeral undertaken by a squad in which the males, zealous one and all,
predominate, I find presently, when the burial is completed, only one
couple in the mortuary cellar. After lending their assistance, the
rest have discreetly retired.
These grave-diggers, in truth, are remarkable fathers. They have
nothing of the happy-go-lucky paternal carelessness that is the
general rule among insects, which pester the mother for a moment with
their attentions and then leave her to care for the offspring! But
those who would be idlers in the other castes here labour valiantly,
now in the interest of their own family, now in that of another's,
without distinction. If a couple is in difficulties, helpers arrive,
attracted by the odour of carrion; anxious to serve a lady, they creep
under the body, work at it with back and claw, bury it and then go
their ways, leaving the master and mistress of the house to their
happiness.
For some time longer these two manipulate the morsel in concert,
stripping it of fur or feather, trussing it and allowing it to simmer
to the grub's taste. When everything is in order, the couple go forth,
dissolving their partnership; and each, following his fancy, begins
again elsewhere, even if only as a mere auxiliary.
Twice and no oftener hitherto have I found the father preoccupied by
the future of his sons and labouring in order to leave them rich: it
happens with certain dung-workers and with the Necrophori, who bury
dead bodies. Scavengers and undertakers both have exemplary morals.
Who would look for virtue in such a quarter?
What follows--the larval existence and the metamorphosis--is a
secondary and, for that matter, a familiar detail. It is a dry subject
and I will deal with it briefly. At the end of May, I exhume a Brown
Rat, buried by the grave-diggers a fortnight earlier. Transformed into
a black, sticky mass, the horrible dish provides me with fifteen
larvae already, for the most part, of the normal size. A few adults,
unquestionably connections of the brood, are also swarming amid the
putrescence. The laying-time is over now and victuals are plentiful.
Having nothing else to do, the foster-parents have sat down to the
feast with the nurslings.
The undertakers are quick at rearing a family. It is at most a
fortnight since the Rat was laid in the earth; and here already is a
vigorous population on the verge of the metamorphosis. This precocity
amazes me. It would seem as though carrion liquefaction, deadly to any
other stomach, were in this case a food productive of special energy,
which stimulates the organism and accelerates its growth, so that the
fare may be consumed before its approaching conversion into mould.
Living chemistry makes haste to outstrip the ultimate reactions of
mineral chemistry.
White, naked, blind, possessing the customary attributes of life spent
in the dark, the larva, with its tapering outline, is slightly
reminiscent of the Ground-beetles'. The mandibles are black and
powerful and make excellent dissecting-scissors. The limbs are short,
but capable of a quick, toddling gait. The segments of the abdomen are
clad on the upper surface in a narrow red plate, armed with four
little spikes, whose office apparently is to furnish points of support
when the larva quits the natal dwelling and dives into the soil, there
to undergo the transformation. The thoracic segments are provided with
wider plates, but unarmed.
The adults discovered in the company of their larval family, in this
putrescence which was a Rat, are all abominably verminous. So shiny
and neat in their attire, when at work under the first Moles of April,
the Necrophori, when June approaches, become odious to look upon. A
layer of parasites envelops them; insinuating itself into the joints,
it forms an almost continuous crust. The insect presents a misshapen
appearance under this overcoat of vermin, which my hair-pencil can
hardly brush aside. Driven off the belly, the horde runs round the
sufferer, perches on his back and refuses to let go.
I recognize the Beetle's Gamasus, the Tick who so often soils the
ventral amethyst of our Geotrupes. No, life's prizes do not go to the
useful. Necrophori and Geotrupes devote themselves to the general
health; and these two corporations, so interesting in their hygienic
functions, so remarkable for their domestic morals, fall victims to
the vermin of poverty. Alas, of this discrepancy between the services
rendered and the harshness of life there are many other examples
outside the world of scavengers and undertakers!
The Burying-beetles display an exemplary domestic morality, but it
does not continue till the end. In the first fortnight of June, the
family being sufficiently provided, the sextons strike work and my
cages are deserted on the surface, in spite of new arrivals of Mice
and Sparrows. From time to time, some grave-digger leaves the subsoil
and comes crawling languidly into the fresh air.
Another rather curious fact now attracts my attention. All those who
climb up from underground are maimed, with limbs amputated at the
joints, some higher up, some lower down. I see one cripple who has
only one leg left entire. With this odd limb and the stumps of the
others, lamentably tattered, scaly with vermin, he rows, as it were,
over the sheet of dust. A comrade emerges, better off for legs, who
finishes the invalid and cleans out his abdomen. Thus do my thirteen
remaining Necrophori end their days, half-devoured by their
companions, or at least shorn of several limbs. The pacific relations
of the outset are succeeded by cannibalism.
History tells us that certain peoples, the Massagetae and others, used
to kill off their old men to save them from senile misery. The fatal
blow on the hoary skull was in their eyes an act of filial piety. The
Necrophori have their share of these ancient barbarities. Full of days
and henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually
exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and the
imbecile?
The Massagetae might plead, as an excuse for their atrocious custom, a
dearth of provisions, which is an evil counsellor; not so the
Necrophori, for, thanks to my generosity, victuals are more than
plentiful, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no
part in this slaughter. What we see is an aberration due to
exhaustion, the morbid fury of a life on the point of extinction. As
is generally the case, work bestows a peaceable disposition on the
grave-digger, while inaction inspires him with perverted tastes.
Having nothing left to do, he breaks his kinsman's limbs and eats him
up, heedless of being maimed or eaten himself. It is the final
deliverance of verminous old age.
This murderous frenzy, breaking out late in life, is not peculiar to
the Necrophorus. I have described elsewhere the perversity of the
Osmia, so placid in the beginning. Feeling her ovaries exhausted, she
smashes her neighbours' cells and even her own; she scatters the dusty
honey, rips open the egg, eats it. The Mantis devours the lovers who
have played their parts; the mother Decticus willingly nibbles a thigh
of her decrepit husband; the merry Crickets, once the eggs are laid in
the ground, indulge in tragic domestic quarrels and with not the least
compunction slash open one another's bellies. When the cares of the
family are finished, the joys of life are finished likewise. The
insect then sometimes becomes depraved; and its disordered mechanism
ends in aberrations.
The larva has nothing striking to show in the way of industry. When it
has fattened to the desired extent, it leaves the charnel-house of the
natal crypt and descends into the earth, far from the putrefaction.
Here, working with its legs and its dorsal armour, it presses back the
sand around it and makes itself a close cabin wherein to rest for the
metamorphosis. When the lodge is ready and the torpor of the
approaching moult arrives, it lies inert; but, at the least alarm, it
comes to life and turns round on its axis.
Even so do several nymphs spin round and round when disturbed, notably
that of _AEgosomus scabricornis_ which I have now before my eyes in
July. It is always a fresh surprise to see these mummies suddenly
throw off their immobility and gyrate on their own axis with a
mechanism whose secret deserves to be fathomed. The science of
rational mechanics might find something here to whet its finest
theories upon. The strength and litheness of a clown cannot compare
with those of this budding flesh, this hardly coagulated glair.
Once isolated in its cell, the larva of the Necrophorus becomes a
nymph in ten days or so. I lack the evidence furnished by direct
observation, but the story is completed of itself. The Necrophorus
must assume the adult form in the course of the summer; like the
Dung-beetle, he must enjoy in the autumn a few days of revelry free
from family cares. Then, when the cold weather draws near, he goes to
earth in his winter quarters, whence he emerges as soon as spring
arrives.