212 THE BIOLOGY OF INSECTS 



care in the small bug Aepophilns bonnairei (Fig. 57) which 

 lives on the sea-shore between tide-marks. A number of 

 young beneath a stone, kept for observation by J. H. Keys, 

 arranged themselves in a circle facing the mother in the 

 centre. When the stone was lifted, ** the adult would 

 almost instantly alarm the young with a rapid tap with each 

 antenna alternately, and the whole troop would scamper 

 round to the other s'de of the stone with great speed." 



Undoubtedly one of the most remarkable of all recorded 

 cases of family life among ** non-social " insects is that of 

 the European horned dung-beetles (Copris) whose habits 

 are described in a well-known memoir of J. H. Fabre 

 (1897). These insects do not roll balls of dung about as 

 i their allies the '* sacred " beetles (Scarabaeus) do. For 

 their own food-supply they excavate beneath lumps of 

 excrement lying on the surface of the land, and '' here is 

 engulfed without definite shape, an enormous supply of 

 victuals, bearing eloquent witness to the insect's gluttony." 

 In the breeding season, which comes in May or June, 

 however, a pair of Copris work together, digging out a 

 spacious ovoid chamber, within which sheep- dung, collected 

 by the male, is comminuted and kneaded by the female 

 into an egg-shaped mass. This is later subdivided into 

 several pellets on each of which the female carefully forms a 

 shallow basin- like cavity, lays an egg therein, and covers it 

 by judiciously applied pressure. The male of Copris 

 hispanns leaves all this work to his mate, but in C. lunatus 

 the father remains underground and as a result of his 

 assistance the pellets are twice as numerous as in the other 

 species. In the former case the mother, in the latter both 

 the parents, keep guard for several weeks over these pellets 

 within which the grubs are developing. In due time the 

 larvae pupate, and at length the young beetles are perfected 

 and emerge ; they make their way to the surface of the 

 ground accompanied by their parents, who thus have the 

 privilege — very rare among insects outside the *' social " 

 groups — of seeing the members of their family reach the 

 adult state. It is this unusual condition which makes 



