Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
Denison, Sir W., manner of ridding themselves of vermin among the Australians; extinction of Tasmanians. Denny, H., on the lice of domestic animals. Dermestes murinus, stridulation of. Descent traced through the mother alone. Deserts, protective colouring of animals inhabiting.
We see Dermestes and Saprinidæ hastening to the arum-flower. All day long they writhe and wriggle in a swarm, although perfectly free to escape; numbers perish in the tumultuous orgy. They are not retained by the desire of food, for the arum provides them with nothing eatable; they do not come to breed, for they take care not to establish their grubs in that place of famine.
The collection consisted entirely of two species Dermestes and Saprinidæ both eager prospectors of carrion and animal detritus during the spring.
The Dermestes, who loves hard food, would dig his teeth into the horny little kegs and demolish them at a bite. Even though he did not touch the contents, a live thing which he probably dislikes, he would at least test the flavor of that lifeless substance, the container. The future Fly would be lost, because her casing would be pierced.
He is no anatomical dissector, cutting his subject open, carving its flesh with the scalpel of his mandibles; he is literally a gravedigger, a sexton. While the others Silphae, Dermestes, Horn-beetles gorge themselves with the exploited flesh, without, of course, forgetting the interests of the family, he, a frugal eater, hardly touches his booty on his own account.
As soon as the creature is swollen with the gases of putrefaction, and the fur commences to fall from the greenish skin, a host of insects arrive Silphidæ, Dermestes, Horn-beetles, and Necrophori of which not a single specimen could ever be obtained in my garden or even in the neighbourhood without the use of such a bait.
The Sarcophagi, or grey flesh flies, "with red bloodshot eyes, and the stony gaze of a knacker"; the Saprinidae, "with bodies of polished ebony like pearls of jet"; the Silpha aplata, with large and sombre wing-cases in mourning; the shiny slow-trotting Horn-beetle; the Dermestes, "powdered with snow beneath the stomach"; the slender Staphylinus; the whole fauna of the corpse, the whole horde of artisans of death, "intoxicating themselves with purulence, probing, excavating, mangling, dissecting, transmuting, and stamping out infection."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking