Green burial

Returning to my theme of July 26th about the natural way of death, what we see here is the undertakers' work in progress. 
Having placed the body of a rat (cat-killed)  on the lawn three days ago, covered with a grid so that it wouldn't be taken by a scavenger, I awaited  developments. By yesterday morning it had started to subside into the earth and today most of it was below ground - you can still see the back legs protruding on the right. It's being buried by sexton beetles that are excavating the soil underneath so that the body gradually sinks down and disappears from view. 
Sexton or burying beetles perform this job because they lay their eggs on the dead animal and their larvae feed upon it. Adult beetles are said to be able to smell putrefaction a mile away with their highly sensitive antennae.

 The male beetle, having found and claimed a corpse, attracts a mate  and together they work on creating their grisly brood chamber. The female sexton is one of the few insects (earwigs are another)  that actively feeds and nurtures her young, just as does a parent bird with nestlings.


"Scarcely has the female approached when all larvae lift up the front of their bodies steeply, so that their legs grasp in space. The beetle remains standing directly over the brood and waves her forelegs with shaking movement on the carrion or sometimes on the larvae, which flock round her head. Now the female closes her mandibles and rapidly lays the head of a larva between the jaws itself pressing closely to the mouth opening of the female. If allowed the chance, then one sees a tiny drop of brown liquid on the mouth of the mother in which the larva infringes. But already after a few seconds the female turns and immediately tries to reach another larva with his mouth held high. Without doubt, the brood is fed by the female."
(The illustration on the right here shows the mother beetle feeding her young.)


This is from a classic 1933 monograph (rather eccentrically translated from the German)  by Erna Pukowski, a Polish woman entomologist,  which makes fascinating reading if you want to know all there is to know about burying beetles. 
Or there's a short, less challenging,  clip of the beetle going about its business here. 
It may seem an unsavoury lifestyle but without these beetles, and other natural undertakers, the countryside would look like a battlefield of small corpses.