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zakruti.com » Knowledge, science, education » Deep Look
Watch Flesh-Eating Beetles Strip Bodies to the Bone

Watch Flesh-Eating Beetles Strip Bodies to the Bone

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Rating: 4.0; Vote: 1
Dermestid Beetles are fast and fastidious eaters. They can pick a carcass clean in just days leaving even the most delicate bone structures intact. This makes them the perfect tool for museum scientists-- if you keep them far, far away from valuable collections. SUBSCRIBE: In nature, Dermestid Beetles are death-homing devices. Theyll find a dead body about a week after death and lay eggs in the drying flesh. The larvae emerge with a voracious appetite, outgrowing their skins six to eight times in just days before pupating, becoming adults and flying away to start a new colony. These Dermestid Beetles at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley are direct descendants from the original colony established in this museum in 1924. The process now used at museums around the world was pioneered here. These are the beetles you see here in this flesh-eating beetles time lapse. Scientists in the prep lab downstairs receive nearly a thousand carcasses a year. Its their job to preserve each animal for long-term use in the collections upstairs. And the work is not for the squeamish. What makes beetles ideal for cleaning museum specimens is that theyre fast and fastidious eaters. They can pick a carcass clean while leaving even the most delicate bone structures intact. It takes a large beetle colony 24 48 hours to clean the bones of small animals like rabbits and owls, and they can work on 100 - 200 specimens at a time. Larger animals like deer or coyotes take about a week. But the alliance between beetles and museum is an uneasy one. Downstairs the beetles are a critical tool. But if Dermestids got loose upstairs, they could wreak havoc in the library stacks, munching through specimen drawers and ruining entire collections. --- More KQED SCIENCE: Tumblr: Twitter: KQED Science: --- More great DEEP LOOK episodes: Where Are the Ants Carrying All Those Leaves? What Happens When You Put a Hummingbird in a Wind Tunnel? Pygmy Seahorses: Masters of Camouflage Related videos from the PBS Digital Studios Network! Can Microbes Solve Murder Mysteries? - Gross Science The Surprising Ways Death Shapes Our Lives - BrainCraft Do Animals Mourn Their Dead? - It's Okay to Be Smart (ft. BrainCraft and Gross Science) --- More KQED SCIENCE: Tumblr: Twitter: KQED Science: Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Date: 2023-11-16

Comments and reviews: 11


This is exactly what I'd like to have done to my flesh when I die. My bones, I'd like to go to artists who would carve them. I don't really care where my bones end up, but I think it'd be really cool for them to be out there somewhere delicately carved and made into something beautiful
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who else finds it morbidly fascinating how the beetles and larvae walk along the skeletons and in the skulls of long dead beasts 100 times the size of them scaling them and going inside their ribs like a skeletal home like a fantasy adventurer wandering through the skeleton of a dragon
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The background music at the end of the video is actually a song called the hearse song I dont recomend listening to it unless if you are okay to get creeped out, dont believe me here are some verses:
The worms crawl out the worms crawl in
You dont want to hear the next part
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I have a small colony of these, they originally came from some old Popeyes chicken someone threw out and they established a colony in there, I took about two dozen home and now I probably have at least a hundred.
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Me: Learns about dinos being ded from meteorite
Narrator: Says stuff about this
Me: Hmm.
My brain: THOSE BUGS WAS GAINT THE BUGS ATE DINOS AND AFTERRRR BOOOOMMMMM! DED BUGS!
Me: .O k
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Wait. Are the bugs native to the the area museum located? If not, they could escape and become an invasive species that competes with native wildlife.
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Shame that Berkeley now is such a dumpster of a city, I'd never do research there given the current state of the Bay Area.
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So much information in a 3 minute segment. I can learn more from a 3 minute video than a 1 hour college lecture.
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scientist: alright and now its there job.
The beetles: ahhh yes I help and I eat, I think its a killer job.
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I love how they did the ending song after saying the bugs always win. Look up don't laugh as hearse goes by
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If a place that shows dead animals is called The Library of Life, then are zoos called The Library of Death?
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