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Watch baby beetles beg for a meal of rotting flesh | Science | AAAS
What’s the difference between a suburban parent and a burying beetle? When the beetle wants to call the kids to dinner, it doesn’t stand on the porch and yell—it releases a pheromone called 2-phenoxyethanol, a chemical message that sets its brood begging. New research suggests the pheromone not only signals “suppertime!” but it may also prevent the babies from becoming supper, themselves.
Burying beetles (Nicrophorus quadripunctatus) lay their eggs in the decaying corpses of small animals such as birds and rodents. When larvae are young, the mother feeds them meals of regurgitated liquified flesh as often as three times per hour. Although the babies scramble to be fed at mealtimes, they are well-behaved in the intervening moments—even though mom is close by.
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I'm fascinated by the interrelationship between chemicals & living things. Pheromones are good examples. They are used for attraction during mating in moths & butterflies, for alarm during attack in social insects like bees & ants, and for aggregation when bark beetles find vulnerable host trees in forests. This 'come & get it' beetle feeding pheromone is another interesting example of chemicals being used by one insect to control the behavior of another.
What’s the difference between a suburban parent and a burying beetle? When the beetle wants to call the kids to dinner, it doesn’t stand on the porch and yell—it releases a pheromone called 2-phenoxyethanol, a chemical message that sets its brood begging. New research suggests the pheromone not only signals “suppertime!” but it may also prevent the babies from becoming supper, themselves.
Burying beetles (Nicrophorus quadripunctatus) lay their eggs in the decaying corpses of small animals such as birds and rodents. When larvae are young, the mother feeds them meals of regurgitated liquified flesh as often as three times per hour. Although the babies scramble to be fed at mealtimes, they are well-behaved in the intervening moments—even though mom is close by.
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I'm fascinated by the interrelationship between chemicals & living things. Pheromones are good examples. They are used for attraction during mating in moths & butterflies, for alarm during attack in social insects like bees & ants, and for aggregation when bark beetles find vulnerable host trees in forests. This 'come & get it' beetle feeding pheromone is another interesting example of chemicals being used by one insect to control the behavior of another.
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...think I'll pass...:2razz: