As their name suggests, carrion beetles eat carrion – the meat and tissues of dead animals that they come ...
What Do Carrion Beetles Eat?
As their name suggests, carrion beetles eat carrion – the meat and tissues of dead animals that they come across, and other dead and rotting organic matter. The dead animal is usually in an advanced state of decay; carrion beetles never hunt live prey and almost never eat fresh food. They are adapted to a life of scavenging.
Carrion beetles are mostly inactive during the day. They hide under stones, slip into cracks that they dig out between the bark and trunk of dead or sick trees or they lie among plant roots. They come out again in the evening and look for food.
A carrion beetle has a very finely tuned sense of smell and it uses the sensitive receptors on its club shaped antennae to find potential sources of food quite large distances away. As well as eating animal bodies, they also eat rotting vegetation, fungi and excrement from all sorts of animals.
Carrion beetles are mostly inactive during the day. They hide under stones, slip into cracks that they dig out between the bark and trunk of dead or sick trees or they lie among plant roots. They come out again in the evening and look for food.
A carrion beetle has a very finely tuned sense of smell and it uses the sensitive receptors on its club shaped antennae to find potential sources of food quite large distances away. As well as eating animal bodies, they also eat rotting vegetation, fungi and excrement from all sorts of animals.