This beetle, which turned up in our garden, is Oieceoptoma thoracicum, whose mottled exoskeleton has the appearance of shimmering silk. Apparently it feeds on insects found in dung and dead animals.
I found this very fine sexton beetle Nicrophorus investigator on the sand dunes at Embleton on the Northumberland coast. Sexton beetles bury corpses of dead animals by excavating the soil from under their bodies, then lay their eggs in the corpse. The females stay with the corpse and feed on it until the grubs hatch, then she feeds them with regurgitated food until they're large enough to tuck into thje corpse unaided. Nice.
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You summed things up nicely.
ReplyDeleteThey are beautiful though.
Hard to overlook those sexton beetles, with that gaudy colour scheme!
DeleteGreat colour on these beetles...
ReplyDeleteI'm not much good at IDing beetles Amanda but can't go wrong when they are this colourful!
DeleteI am struck dumb! And the ancient Sanskrit poems romanticize the beetle!
ReplyDeleteThe scarlet and black sexton beetle is fairly common here. Fascinating insects.
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