Beetle Mothers Eat Nagging Offsprings, Researchers Find

A certain type of beetle, called buying beetle, eats its nagging offspring, a new study reports.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, found that burying beetles resort to cannibalism when the young ones demand too much food. Both male and female burying beetles help in raising the young- an uncommon trait among insects.

The beetle, as the name suggests, buries carcasses of small vertebrates such as birds and rodents to feed its offspring.

The female beetle lays eggs on decaying matter and when the eggs hatch, it eats a part of the carcass. The beetle then digests the carcass and regurgitates the semi-digested matter into the mouth of the young ones.

In the experiments, researchers found that mother beetles tended to feed older offspring more than the younger ones. The beetles were also more likely to eat babies that would beg for a lot of food.

According to the researchers, less- demanding baby beetles who only ask for food when they are hungry get more parental care than babies that beg even when not hungry, according to Physorg.

"We already knew that larvae beg more if they have been deprived of food but we had not known whether this is because they are informing their parents how hungry they are or whether they are simply squabbling with each other to get their parents' attention," Dr Clare Andrews, of the University of Edinburgh's school of biological sciences told BBC.

"Our study shows that if you're a baby beetle it doesn't pay to pester your mother for food unless you're really hungry. Communication is crucial in helping to mediate conflicts of interests between parents and offspring," Andrews added, reports BBC.

The study is published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

Previous research on burying beetles had shown that older males make better dads than younger males. Older males have fewer chances of reproducing again and so invest more time and energy in taking care of babies.