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Updated: June 20, 2025
Before I see the thing happen I am persuaded that it will fall, that the Necrophori, often confronted by the difficulties of a body which is not lying on the soil, must possess the instinct to shake it to the ground. The fortuitous support of a few bits of stubble, of a few interlaced brambles, a thing so common in the fields, should not be able to baffle them.
Let us add for this is an essential point the art of continually jerking and shaking the body, so as to pack it into a lesser volume and cause it to pass when passage is obstructed. We shall presently see that this art plays a part of the greatest importance in the industry of the Necrophori. Although he has disappeared, the Mole is still far from having reached his destination.
There is nothing to tell us so; and this was the essential point which a sterling observer was bound not to neglect. Were they not rather five chance Necrophori who, guided by the smell, without any previous understanding, hastened to the abandoned Mouse to exploit her on their own account? I incline to this opinion, the likeliest of all in the absence of exact information.
Why prolong the agony of the impotent and the imbecile? The Massagetæ might plead, as an excuse for their atrocious custom, a dearth of provisions, which is an evil counsellor; not so the Necrophori, for, thanks to my generosity, victuals are more than plentiful, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no part in this slaughter.
Four other Necrophori, buried here and there under a little sand, comrades and acquaintances, fellow-workers of the day before, were occupying the same cage; and not one of the busy ones thought of calling on them to assist. Despite their extreme embarrassment, the owners of the Mouse accomplished their task to the end, without the least help, though this could have been so easily requisitioned.
It hangs plumb, in contact with the stick. Very soon two Necrophori have discovered the tit-bit. They climb up the miniature mast; they explore the body, dividing its fur by thrusts of the head. It is recognized to be an excellent find. So to work.
These decisive experiments, repeated under many different forms, prove that never, never in this world, do the Necrophori dig, or even give a superficial scrape, at the foot of the gallows, unless the hanging body touch the ground at that point.
The Necrophori "exhaling the odour of musk, and bearing red pompons at the end of their antennae," are "transcendent alchemists."
For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiæ, the hard claws refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivel, unused, upon the gallows. My Necrophori, some sooner, some later, abandon the insoluble mechanical problem: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to unhook the coveted carcase. Curious reasoners, in faith!
This he demonstrates to satiety, and his astonishing Necrophori, which adapt themselves so admirably to circumstances and triumph over the experimental difficulties to which he subjects them, seem scarcely to exceed the limits of those actions which at bottom are merely unconscious. With the spawning of the Osmia, Fabre throws a fresh and unexpected light on the intuitive knowledge of instinct.
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