The Sacred Beetle, and Others

by Jean-Henri Fabre

There is nothing fresh about the work of the Bull Onthophagus, which, save for being larger, differs in no way from that of the Forked Onthophagus. I am unacquainted with the insect’s modus operandi. As regards the inner secrets of nest-building, these dwarfs are as reticent as their big colleagues. One alone satisfied my curiosity, or nearly; and then it was not an Onthophagus but a kindred species, the Yellow-footed Oniticellus (O. flavipes).

I capture her in the last week of July, under a heap which a Mule employed in treading out the corn on the thrashing-floor dropped during a rest from work. The thick blanket, transformed by a hot sun into an incomparable incubator, shelters a host of Onthophagi. The Oniticellus is by herself. Her quick retreat down a yawning well attracts my attention. I dig to a depth of about two inches and extract the lady of the house together with her work, the latter in a sadly damaged condition. I can, however, distinguish a sort of bag.

I install the Oniticellus in a tumbler, on a layer of heaped earth, and give her as her nest-building materials what the Sacred Beetles and the Copres prefer, the Sheep’s plastic paste. Caught at the moment when she was about to lay, goaded by the irresistible needs of her ovaries, the mother lends herself very obligingly to my wishes. She lays four eggs in three days. This rapidity, which would doubtless be even greater if my curiosity had not disturbed her in her task, is explained by the simplicity of the work. [[177]]

The mother goes to the lower surface of the stuff which I have supplied and detaches from the central and softest part a slice sufficient for her plans, removing it all in one piece, by means of a circular section. It is the same method as that employed by the Copris taking from her loaf the wherewithal to make a pellet. There is a pit immediately below, dug in advance. The Oniticellus goes down it with her burden.

I wait half an hour, to give the work time to take shape, and then turn the glass upside down, hoping to surprise the mother in her domestic business. The original little lump is now a bag moulded by pressure against the sides of the well. The mother is at the bottom, motionless, bewildered by my disturbing visit and the intrusion of light. To see her working with her forehead and legs in order to spread the matter, crush it and apply it to its earthen sheath seems to me a very difficult thing to do. I abandon the attempt and restore the glass to its first position.

A little later, I make a second examination, when the mother has left her burrow. The work is now finished. The outward form is that of a thimble fifteen millimetres deep by ten wide.[2] The flat end has all the appearance of a lid fitted to the opening and carefully soldered on. The rounded lower half of the thimble is full. This is the grub’s larder. Above is the hatching-chamber, with the egg sticking up from the floor, fixed perpendicularly by one end.

Great is the danger for the Oniticellus and the Onthophagus, offspring of the dog-days, both of them. Their jar of preserves is greatly restricted in volume. Its shape is in no way calculated to reduce evaporation; it is too near the surface of the soil to escape the dangerous dryness [[178]]of the air. If the cake should harden, the grub will die, after its abstinence has been prolonged to the utmost limits of endurance.

I place in glass tubes, which will represent the native well, a few Onthophagus- and Oniticellus-thimbles, first contriving an opening in the side which will enable me to see what happens within. I close the tubes with a plug of cotton and keep them in a shady part of my study. Evaporation must be very slight in these impermeable and moreover plugged sheaths. Nevertheless it is enough to produce in a few days a degree of dryness which is fatal to feeding.

I see the starvelings remain motionless, unable to bite into the hateful crust; I see them lose their plumpness, I see them wrinkle and shrivel, and at last, in a fortnight’s time, take on all the appearance of death. I replace the dry cotton with wet cotton. The atmosphere in the tubes becomes damp; the thimbles are gradually saturated with the moisture, swell out and soften; and the dying come back to life. They do so to such good purpose that the whole cycle of the metamorphoses is safely accomplished, on condition that the wet cotton be renewed from time to time.

My carefully graduated artificial shower, with its damped cotton to represent the clouds, inspires that return to life. It is like a resurrection. In the normal conditions prevailing in the torrid, rain-grudging month of August, the probability of an equivalent of that shower is almost nil. How then is the fatal drying-up of the victuals avoided? To begin with, there are, so it seems to me, certain gifts bestowed on these little ones so inadequately protected by their mother’s industry against the enemy, drought. I have seen Onthophagus- and Oniticellus-larvæ recover [[179]]their appetite, their plumpness and their vigour under the wet cotton, after a three weeks’ fast that had reduced them to a wrinkled pilule. This faculty of endurance has its uses: it enables the possessor to await, in a state of lethargy akin to death, the few, very uncertain drops of rain that will put an end to the famine. It comes to the grub’s rescue, but it is not sufficient: the prosperity of a race cannot be based upon privation.