CLOSED: Carrion Beetles

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Ozark Ozark, MO(Zone 6a) Aug 16, 2009

We live in the country, and I fileted a bunch of fish yesterday (the white bass are biting). When I got done, the leftover heads and innards filled a 5 gallon plastic bucket about 2/3 full. I took the bucket out by our compost pile and set it on the grass, intending to bury it deep in the compost with a tractor.

I forgot, and when I did that today the bucket had been sitting out about 20 hours. When I dumped it, besides the flies there were a whole bunch of carrion beetles, scarabs - whatever they are, in it. I've seen them before around dead things. They were about 3/4" long, almost as wide as they were long, black except for a large gold triangle covering the whole back just behind their heads, and they're very fast-moving. Really nice-looking bugs if you don't think about how they make their living.

Are these what the ancient Egyptians called Scarabs and used as a symbol? They look like it.

Also, how the heck do they get there so fast? That doesn't seem like near enough time for eggs to hatch, go through a grub stage, and make mature beetles. These are big bugs.

On the other hand, if the beetles were already mature, how did they climb the outside of that plastic bucket? I don't think they could - do they fly?

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suunto Sinks Grove, WV Aug 16, 2009

Carrion beetles (also known as burying beetles or sexton beetles) are in the family Silphidae - see http://tinyurl.com/pcr97j for some representative examples. Yours might be the American carrion beetle, Necrophila americana. These beetles appear to have an excellent sense of smell, often arriving at carcasses very shortly after death, and they do fly quite well. I used to collect them by placing small dead fish under a board, then checking for beetles the next day. The sacred scarab beetles of the Egyptians were dung-feeding species in the family Scarabaeidae.

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Ozark Ozark, MO(Zone 6a) Aug 16, 2009

Yes, that's it - Necrophila americana. It's amazing that they can find dead things so quickly. Thanks.

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