TLDR
To complete the cycle of the year in the adult form, to see one’s self surrounded by one’s sons at the spring festival, to double and treble one’s family: that surely is a most exceptional privilege in the insect world. The Bees, the aristocracy of instinct, perish once the honey-pot is filled; the Butterflies, the aristocracy not of instinct but of dress, die when they have fastened their packet of eggs in a propitious spot; the richly-armoured Ground-beetles succumb when the germs of a posterity are scattered beneath the stones.
So with the others, except among the social insects, where the mother survives, either alone or accompanied by her attendants. It is a general law: the insect is born orphaned of both its parents. And lo, by an unexpected turn of fate, the humble scavenger escapes the catastrophes that devour the mighty! The Dung-beetle, sated with days, becomes a patriarch.via the TL;DR App
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Written by jeanhenrifabre | I was an entomologist, and author known for the lively style of my popular books on the lives of insects.
