The Sacred Beetle, and Others

by Jean-Henri Fabre

I surprise the couple at the cross-roads where the five blind-alleys, the sausages, start. The intrusion of the light has frightened them into immobility. Before the disturbance caused by my excavations, what were the two faithful partners doing at this spot? They were [[260]]watching over the five cells, ramming down the last column of provisions, completing it with new contributions of material, brought down from above and taken from the heap that forms a cover to the shaft. They were perhaps preparing to dig a sixth chamber, if not more, and to stock it like the others. I realize at any rate that there must be many ascents from the bottom of the pit to the rich warehouse on the surface, whence the bundles of material are carried down in the legs of the one to be methodically pressed on top of the egg by the other.

The shaft indeed is open throughout its length. Moreover, to prevent the crumbling of the walls which would result from frequent journeys, the sides are plastered with stucco from end to end. This coat is made of the same material as the puddings and is more than a twenty-fifth of an inch thick. It is continuous and fairly even, without having too elaborate a finish. It keeps the surrounding earth in place, so much so that big fragments of the tunnel can be removed without losing their shape.

In the hamlets on the Alps, the south fronts of the buildings are coated with Cow-dung, which, after drying in the summer sun, becomes the winter fuel. The Bison knows this pastoral method, but practises it with another object: he hangs his house with manure to keep it from crumbling. The father might well be entrusted with this work in the intervals of rest which the mother leaves him while she is busy in the ticklish work of making her pudding layer by layer. The Geotrupes, by way of yet another industrial resemblance, has already shown us a similar consolidating plaster. Hers, it is true, is less regular and less complete.

After being ousted by my curiosity, the Bison couple set to work again and, by the middle of July, supplied me with three more puddings, making a total of eight. [[261]]This time I find my two captives dead, one on the surface, the other in the ground. Can it be an accident? Or is it not more likely that the Bison constitutes an exception to the longevity of the Scarabs, Copres and others, who behold their offspring and even fly away to their second wedding in the following spring?

I incline to the belief that we come back here to the general insect law of a short life deprived of the chief joy of parenthood, the sight of one’s children, for no regrettable incident happened, so far as I know, in the vivarium. If I am right in my conjectures, why does the Bison, though a near kinsman of the Copris, who attains a green old age, die so quickly, like the common herd, once the future of his family is assured? Here again we have an unsolved mystery.

A rapid sketch of the larva is preferable to long descriptions of its jaws and palpi, which make dull reading. I shall have said enough, I think, on the subject if I mention that it is bent into a crook, that it carries a knapsack on its back, that it is a quick evacuator and that it is clever at stopping up any cracks in the dwelling: characteristics and talents which are a general rule among the Dung-beetles. In August, when the pudding has been consumed in the middle and has become something of a ruin, the grub retires to the lower end and here isolates itself from the remainder of the cavity by means of a spherical enclosure, of which the mortar-bag supplies the materials.

The work, a graceful sphere about the size of a large cherry, is a masterpiece of stercoral architecture and may be compared with that which the Bull Onthophagus has already shown us. Little nodes, arranged in concentric lines and alternating like the tiles of a roof, adorn the object from pole to pole. Each of them must correspond with a stroke of the trowel putting its load [[262]]of mortar in place. If you did not know what it was, you would take the thing for the chiselled kernel of some tropical fruit. A sort of rough pericarp completes the illusion. It is the rind of the pudding which surrounds the central jewel but is easily removed, just as the husk separates from the nut. When we have done the shelling, we are quite surprised to find this splendid kernel under its rustic wrapper.

Such is the chamber built with a view to the metamorphosis. The larva spends the winter there in a state of torpor. I hoped to obtain the adult insect in the spring. To my great surprise, the larval stage continued until the end of July. It takes about a year, therefore, for the nymph to make its appearance.

This slowness in maturing surprises me. Can it be the rule in the open fields? I think so, for in the confinement of my insect-house nothing happened, to my knowledge, that would occasion this delay. I therefore enter the result of my manœuvres without any fear of making a mistake: lying lifeless in its elegant and solid casket, the larva of the Bison Onitis takes twelve months to develop into a nymph, whereas those of the other Dung-beetles effect their transformation in a few weeks. As to stating or even suspecting the cause of this strange larval longevity, these are points which must be left in the limbo of the unexplained.

Softened by the September rains, the stercoral shell, until now as hard as a plum-stone, yields to the hermit’s thrust; and the adult Beetle comes up into the light of day to lead a life of revelry so long as the mild atmosphere of the last days of summer permits. When the first cold weather sets in, he retires to his winter quarters underground and reappears in the spring to begin the cycle of life all over again. [[263]]