Clean-Up Crew

This beetle is the Red-Lined Carrion Beetle. Many of us are not familiar with carrion beetles, but we should give them tremendous consideration. Carrion beetles provide us with a great service. They are natures clean-up crew. There are many different species of carrion beetles, and each has a specialized service they perform. Some will feed directly on the decaying flesh of a corpse, still others feed on the maggots of flies that are present on the corpse. Either way they are aiding us by decomposing the rotting flesh of animal matter, or ridding us of many flies that plague us on hot summer days. Admittedly it is not the most pleasant work they carry out, crawling under putrid flesh in search of ones meal is anything but appetizing to us humans, but it works for them. Thankfully so!