LIFE AROUND DEATH

It looks like this lovely beetle was caught on photograph while feeding among the petals, on some gorgeous red flower ... a poppy perhaps ... or a fragrant red rose ...

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... but ... if you take a good look at the following shot ...

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... you'll notice a maggot in the scene ... this is the larva of some fly ...

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... a common green bottle fly maybe, the Lucilia sericata ...

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... or the even more common housefly (Musca domestica) ...

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... and the setting isn't a flower ...

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... but this colorful nylon bag from the local supermarket ... a very suspicious looking bag ... that evokes some extremely shady stuff ... and does not promise anything good.
If the photographs could reproduce the smell along with the visuals, some of you would surely move a bit further away from the screen ... most though, will live this page entirely :D
What happened is this : I was cleaning some fish, a species of small sea floor dwelling sharks with pretty massive intestines, and I put all that non - culinary stuff in the bag, planing to cook it for the cats, later that morning, when I'm done with my part of the food.
Some days later I felt a heavy smell spreading all around the yard and garden, and I thought - wow, someone has to have something dead here in the neighborhood, could this end up to be the first murder mystery in this area? I couldn't explain that smell ... until the next day :D when I somehow remembered the fish! I went to my fish cleaning place in the garden, found the nauseating epicenter of the event ...

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... and a prolific community of insects ...

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... busy feeding and reproducing ...

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... on this decomposing little horror show.

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Among the usual flies and their larvae ... I found also one species that I never saw before ...

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... the pretty large rove beetle, Creophilus maxillosus.

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These scavengers and their larvae don't feed exclusively on carcasses, but supplement their diet with active hunting in smelly, decaying places ... like this one, or some dung, gardening compost, decaying mushrooms ... lovely stuff like that.

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It was hard to put on photograph because is always running around when in the open, it stops and slows only when hidden in some dark, shady place difficult to reach with the camera.

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Fortunately I had also plenty of maggots there.

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They were a joy to work with :D ...

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... so nice and slow ... so I took quite a few portraits.

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The flies were feeding around their larvae ...

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... so many of them ...

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... ended up on photograph as well.

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I already introduced these two species ...

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... the Lucilia sericata ...

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... and Musca domestica ...

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... but among them ... crawling around the dirty stone table ...

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... and the filthy bag ...

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... I noticed some slightly smaller, completely black flies ... that I wasn't able to identify. On the following shot ...

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... you can see another species unknown to me. This minuscule fly is cleaning its wings on this photograph ...

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... and here the same fly is feeding on a small chunk of decaying fish material.

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The fly on this photograph is considerably larger than all other flies in the post. This is the Calliphora vicina. A regular visitor of the carcasses, one of the most important species in forensic work.

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Here is another metallic green fly ... for no particular reason ... just posing around because is shiny and beautiful.

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This housefly is cleaning the feet.

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This green bottle fly is enjoying some ugly goo.

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Another look at just another green fly ...

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... and now ...

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... is time to say a few words ...

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... about the beetle from the opening shots.

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This is the Dermestes maculatus ... a hide beetle species ...

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... that feeds on carrion and dry animal products.

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While preparing this post, I learned ... aside from these beetle's scientific name and the fact that is used in forensics ... that is also used by universities and museums to remove the flesh from bones in skeleton preparation. Cool.

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When I finished the dirty work and took all this photographs ... I got the decomposing fish parts out of the nylon ...

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... and put them to rest on the compost ... that will be used to grow eggplants ... tomatoes ... stuff like that.

As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END ...
... & bon appétit :D



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How many ways is there to say magnificent? I looked up the word origin for Creophilus Maxillosus, because something about the name rang a bell. Sure enough, the origin is Greek and Creophilus means flesh lover and Maxillosus means large-jawed. According to an 1882 book, Common British Insects Selected from the Typical Beetles, Moths, and Butterflies of Great Britain, this beetle is "the most voracious carrion eater". The author of the book suggests that whoever identified the beetle surely knew its nature.
Hope you don't mind my excursion into etymology...I am as fascinated by words as I am by insects. And I know you are curious about everything.
Have a great day, @borjan. The first post I read today... quite rewarding.

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:) Thanks for the intervention, always glad to hear something new and glad you like this post. I was fascinated by the insects on that smelly fish and the entire temporary ecosystem that is there until everything is dissolved and recycled. First I thought to take a few shots and get rid of that smell quickly, it was really heavy and nauseating, but then when I started to take photographs, I got hooked and the smell didn't matter anymore.

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