The Sacred Beetle, and Others

by Jean-Henri Fabre

I pack a little glass jar, the size of a Hen’s egg, with Sheep-dung as employed by the Onthophagus. With a glass rod, which leaves a perfectly smooth impression, I make a cylindrical cavity in the heap about an inch deep. After withdrawing the rod, I cover the orifice with a slab of the same material; and I protect the whole against desiccation by means of an hermetically closed lid. It is the Sacred Beetle’s pear, with its hatching-chamber, on a larger scale; it is the Onthophagus’ thimble, enormously exaggerated. I may say that, after the withdrawal of the glass rod, the surface of the cavity is a dull, greenish black, with not a trace of extravasated shiny moisture. If an oozing by capillary action really takes place, the semifluid varnish will appear; if nothing of the kind should occur, the surface will remain dull.

I wait a couple of days to allow the capillary sweating to take effect, if such a process there be. Then I examine the cavity. There is no shiny wash on the walls; they look as dull and dry as at the beginning. Three days later, I make a fresh inspection. Nothing has changed: the pit made by the glass rod shows no sign of exudation; it is even a little drier. So capillary action [[275]]and its extravasations have nothing to do with the matter.

What then is the lime-wash that is found in every cell? The answer is inevitable: it is something produced by the mother, a special gruel, a milk-food elaborated for the benefit of the new-born grub.

The young Pigeon puts his beak into that of his parents, who, with convulsive efforts, force down his gullet first a casein mash secreted in the crop and later a broth of grains softened by being partly digested. He is fed upon disgorged foods, which are kind to the frailty and inexperience of a young stomach. The grub of the Onthophagus is brought up in much the same way, at the start. To assist its first attempts at swallowing, the mother prepares for it, in her crop, a light and strengthening cream.

To pass the dainty from mouth to mouth is impossible in her case: the construction of new cells keeps her busy elsewhere. Moreover—and this is a more serious point—the laying takes place egg by egg, at very long intervals, and the hatching is pretty slow: time would fail, had the family to be brought up in the manner of the Pigeons. Another method is perforce required. The infants’ food is disgorged all over the walls of the cabin, in such a way that the nurseling finds itself surrounded with an abundance of bread and jam, in which the bread, the meat for the strong, is represented by the uncooked material, as supplied by the Sheep, while the jam, the food for the babe, is represented by the same material daintily prepared beforehand in the mother’s stomach. We shall see the grub presently lick first the jam all around it and then stoutly attack the bread. One of our own children would behave no otherwise. [[276]]

I should have liked to catch the mother in the act of disgorging and spreading her broth. I did not succeed in doing so. The proceedings take place in a tiny niche; and the busy cook blocks out the view. Also her fluster at being exhibited in broad daylight at once arrests the work.

If direct observation be lacking, at least the appearance of the material and the result of my experiment with the glass rod speak very plainly and tell us that the Onthophagus, here rivalling the Pigeon, but with a different method, disgorges the first mouthfuls for her sons. And the same may be said of the other Dung-beetles skilled in the art of building a hatching-chamber in the centre of the provisions.

No elsewhere in the insect world, except among the Bees, who prepare disgorged food in the shape of honey, is such solicitude seen. The dung-workers edify us with their morals. Several of them practise association in couples and found a household; several anticipate the process of suckling, that supreme expression of maternal tenderness, by turning their crop into a nipple. Life has its freaks. It settles amid ordure the creatures most highly endowed with domestic qualities. True, from there it mounts, with a sudden flight, to the sublime virtues of the bird.

Among the Onthophagi the egg grows considerably larger after it is laid; it almost doubles its linear dimensions, thus increasing the bulk eightfold. This growth is general among the Dung-beetles. If you note the size of an egg recently laid by any species and measure it again when the grub is about to be born, you will be quite surprised at the singular progress which it has made. The Sacred Beetle’s egg, for instance, which at [[277]]first is lodged pretty spaciously in its hatching-chamber, swells until it nearly fills the cavity.

The first idea that occurs to the mind is a very simple and tempting one, namely, that the egg feeds. Surrounded by strongly-flavoured effluvia, it becomes impregnated with emanations which distend its flexible tunic; it grows by a sort of alimentary respiration, just as a seed swells in fertile soil. That is how I pictured things at the beginning, when the delicate problem presented itself for the first time. But is this really what happens? Ah, if it were enough, when we were in need of food, to stand outside a cook-shop and inhale the smell of the good things that were being prepared inside, what a different world it would seem, to many of us! It would be too lovely!