The Sacred Beetle, and Others

by Jean-Henri Fabre

And do not run away with the idea that this filthy task entails an inelegant shape and a ragged dress. Our squalor is unknown to the insect. In its world, a navvy dons a sumptuous jerkin; an undertaker decks himself in a triple saffron sash; a wood-cutter works in a velvet coat. In like manner, the Onthophagus has his special gorgeousness. True, the costume is always severe: brown and black are the predominant colours, now dull, now polished as ebony. That is the general groundwork, but how chaste and elegant are the decorative details!

One (O. lemur) has wing-cases of a light chestnut colour, with a semicircle of black dots; a second (O. nuchicornis) has similar chestnut wing-cases covered with splashes of Indian ink not unlike the square Hebrew characters; a third (O. Schreberi), who is a glossy black like that of jet, decks himself with four vermilion cockades; a fourth (O. furcatus) lights up the tip of his short wing-cases with a gleam similar to that of dying embers; many (O. vacca, O. cænobita and others) have corselets and heads bright with the metal sheen of Florentine bronze.

The graver’s work completes the beauty of the dress. Dainty chasing in parallel grooves, delicate embroidery, [[174]]knotty chaplets are distributed in profusion among nearly all of them. Yes, the little Onthophagi, with their short bodies and their nimble activity, are really pretty to look at.

And then how original are their frontal decorations! These peace-lovers delight in the panoply of war, as though they, the inoffensive ones, thirsted for battle. Many of them crown their heads with threatening horns. Let us mention a couple of the horned ones whose story will occupy us more particularly. I mean, first, the Bull Onthophagus (O. taurus), clad in raven black. He wears a pair of long horns, gracefully curved and branching to either side. No pedigree bull, in the Swiss meadows, can match them for curve or elegance. The second is the Forked Onthophagus (O. furcatus), who is much smaller. His equipment consists of a fork with three vertical prongs.

There you have the two chief subjects of this brief Onthophagus biography. The others are equally worthy of being chronicled. From first to last, they would all supply us with interesting details, some of them even with peculiarities unknown elsewhere; but we must draw the line somewhere in this multitude, which is difficult to observe in the aggregate. And there is this more serious circumstance, that my choice has not been free: I have had to content myself with the few lucky discoveries made as the result of chance encounters out of doors and with the few successful experiments made in the vivarium.

Two species only, the two which I have named, have proved satisfactory in both directions. Let us watch them at work. They will show us the principal features of the manner of life led by the whole tribe, for they occupy the two extremes of the scale of sizes, the Bull Onthophagus being one of the largest and the Forked Onthophagus one of the smallest. [[175]]

We will speak first of the nest. Contrary to my expectation, the Onthophagi are indifferent nest-builders. With them we find no spheres rolled joyously in the sunshine, no ovoids manipulated laboriously in an underground workshop. Their business, that of reducing filth to dust, appears to give them so much to do that they have no time left for work demanding prolonged patience. They confine themselves to what is strictly necessary and most rapidly obtained.

A perpendicular well is dug, a couple of inches deep, cylindrical in shape and varying in bore according to the size of the well-sinker. The pit of the Forked Onthophagus has the diameter of a lead-pencil; that of the Bull Onthophagus is twice the width. Right at the bottom are the grub’s provisions, plastered against the walls in a tightly-packed heap. The total lack of free space at the sides of the pile shows how the provisioning is done. There is not a sign of a niche, of the least corner that would leave the mother enough liberty of movement to knead and mould her bun. The material therefore is simply pressed down at the bottom of the cylindrical sheath, where it takes the shape of a full thimble.

I dig up some nests of the Forked Onthophagus near the end of July. It is a crude piece of work, which surprises you by its roughness when you think of the neat little worker. Wisps of hay, sticking out anyhow, increase the untidy look of things. The nature of the materials, supplied this time by the Mule, are partly the cause of this ugly appearance.

The length of these nests is fourteen millimetres, the width seven.[1] The upper surface is slightly concave, proving that the pressure has been exercised by the mother. [[176]]The lower end is rounded like the bottom of the well which serves as a mould. I take a needle and with the point of it I pick the rustic structure to pieces. The mass of foodstuff occupies the base, forming the lower two-thirds of the thimble into a compact block; the cell containing the egg is at the top, under a thin, concave lid.