Where Do Carrion Beetles Lay Their Eggs?

Carrion beetles feed on rotting animals, vegetation, fungal matter and excrement an they tend to lay their eggs on a good food source, such as a dead mole. The beetles la their eggs in short tunnels in the body, hollowing out round spaces for the eggs to develop.

Development happens very quickly and the larvae of the carrion beetle hatch to an unbelievably plentiful store of food. They also grow quickly and are protected from the outside world by the body of the mole or other small animal. They become fully developed in about one month and complete their metamorphosis in the place where they hatched, without making any special pupation chamber.

Adult carrion beetles then emerge and abandon the carcass that has housed their early development. Other, related, beetles are more tidy. They sexton beetle also lays its eggs in small animals such as moles and the larvae hatch and pupate there. However, the adults that emerge then bury the body under earth.

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