Burying beetle, Home

Darwin's public champion, British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, was once asked about what the natural world could tell us about the mind of the Creator. Only that, Haldane famously noted, God had an "inordinate fondness for beetles." There are at least 400,000 species, and they make up about 40 percent of all known insect varieties. I am fond of many beetles, but the members of the Family Silphidae, the Carrion Beetles, are among my favorites. This brightly colored gem, which I'm pretty sure is Nicrophorus orbicollis—Arthur V. Evans's sublime Beetles of Eastern North America makes no mention of a common name—came to the kitchen porch lights, and when I discovered it trying to get out of the storm door, I captured it in the bug bottle and photographed it with the Nikon 55mm micro. Identified and enjoyed, the undertaker beetle was then released to resume its late-season rounds of finding a corpse on which to feed, lay eggs, and bury.