It’s easy to imagine an adult bird standing over youngsters whose mouths are open wide for a pre-mashed meal. It’s more difficult to picture a beetle doing the same thing, but the burying beetle Nicrophorus quadripunctatus feeds its young by the same mouth-to-mouth regurgitation technique. In a study published in iScience on September 11, researchers found that burying beetle larvae can sense when the mother beetles emit a pheromone, 2-phenoxyethanol, when they are ready to feed their young. The aromatic compound not only incites the larvae to beg, but also is antimicrobial.
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Source: Phys.org