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Updated: June 20, 2025
It has taken the Necrophori halfway round the clock to ascertain the condition of the locality and to displace the Mouse. In this experiment it appears, in the first place, that the males play a major part in the affairs of the household.
The failure of the great majority proves that the single fugitive was simply digging at random. Circumstances favoured him; and that is all. Do not let us make it a merit that he succeeded where all the others failed. Let us also beware of attributing to the Necrophori an understanding more limited than is usual in entomological psychology.
A hard soil, necessitating the removal of the body, is not the only difficulty familiar to the Necrophori. Often, perhaps more often than not, the ground is covered with grass, above all with couch-grass, whose tenacious rootlets form an inextricable network below the surface.
Will the Necrophori pass on, indifferent to the superb morsel which they see and smell a few inches above their heads, or will they make it drop from its gibbet? Game does not abound to such a point that it can be despised if a few efforts will obtain it.
The Necrophori, in quest of a place where to establish their family, travel great distances to find the corpses of small animals, informed by such odours as offend our own senses at a considerable distance. The Hydnocystis, the food of the Bolboceras, emits no such brutal emanations as these, which readily diffuse themselves through space; it is inodorous, at least to our senses.
All have gone to earth; some are inactive, close to the surface; the rest are busy in their crypts. The presence of the fresh corpse is soon perceived. About seven o'clock in the morning, three Necrophori come hurrying up, two males and a female. They slip under the Mouse, who moves in jerks, a sign of the efforts of the burying-party.
The population of the cage now consists of fourteen Necrophori and will remain the same until the close of my investigations. Of course they do not all take part simultaneously in the day's work; the majority remain underground, somnolent, or occupied in setting their cellars in order.
But, if the bone be too hard, if the prize suspended be a Mole, an adult Mouse or a Sparrow, the wire ligament opposes an insurmountable obstacle to the attempts of the Necrophori, who, for nearly a week, work at the hanging body, partly stripping it of fur or feather and dishevelling it until it forms a lamentable object, and at last abandon it when desiccation sets in.
Four Necrophori, three males and a female, are there with the body. They remain invisible, hidden beneath the carcase, which from time to time seems to return to life, shaken from end to end by the backs of the workers. An observer not in the secret would be somewhat astonished to see the dead creature move.
The sky is splendid; the weather is hot, calm and propitious for those in search of the Lizard crushed beside the footpath. Perhaps the effluvia of the gamy tit-bit have reached them from afar, imperceptible to any other sense than that of the grave-diggers. My Necrophori therefore would be glad to get away. Can they? Nothing would be easier, if a glimmer of reason were to aid them.
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