Carrion Beetle

Carrion beetles are a family of beetles, Silphidae, that locate dead animals using a highly sensitive sense of smell and feed on or breed in the decomposing remains. The burying beetles within this family, genus Nicrophorus, are especially notable for cooperatively burying small carcasses underground as a food store and then providing extended parental care to their larvae, feeding them directly, an unusually advanced level of parental investment among insects; the family's role in quickly locating carrion also makes it useful in forensic entomology for estimating time of death.