BY ANN HAIGH
THIS time of year, things turn a little spooky in West Cork.
Shop windows display witches and skeletons, strange creatures appear on the roadsides in Leap and frightening carved pumpkin faces leer at us from what seems like every direction. As regards festive Halloween wildlife the focus tends to be on animals that people have been traditionally wary of, such as bats and spiders.
However, if we look a little deeper, we can find some aspects of nature that are lot more ghoulish and macabre than these. Let’s have a look at some of my favourite alternative gruesome natural phenomena to get us in the Halloween mood.
Beetlejuice
Have you ever heard about the undertaker of the woods? This is the ominous moniker attributed to a burying beetle called the common sexton beetle. This is a reasonably common insect and may be found wherever there is likely to be dead or decaying animals such as rodents or birds. They have very sensitive feathered antennae that they can use to detect the odour of a dead corpse from as far as two miles away and within an hour of the animal dying. They then speed to the scene and begin digging under the dead bird or small mammal before covering them over with soil to bury them.
These grizzly beetles also strip the dead creature of their fur or feathers and cover them with anal secretions. This might seem like a bizarre thing to do, but their anal secretions are antibacterial and the beetles want to preserve the carcass until their offspring are ready to feed on it. The female beetle will then lay eggs in the soil nearby and when the larvae hatch the parents will use the carcass to feed the young until they are able to feed on it themselves. This demonstration of parental care is quite rare in the insect world. Who needs bats and spiders at Halloween when we have the truly horrific common sexton beetle?
Mushrooms
The oyster mushroom is a classic example, eaten by vegans but a carnivore itself. (Photo: Ann Haigh)
This is the peak time of year for the appearance of mushrooms and the very names of many are fitting for the season. These include the elfin saddle fungus; the shape of which appears like a saddle upon which a tiny elf might sit astride. Dead man’s fingers; blackened fungal projections that rise out of rotting wood like those from the hands of a zombie emerging forth. Yellow brain or witches’ butter; which consists of a frilly gelatinous mass of bright yellow that grows on dead wood.
Nematophagous fungi, literally translating as worm-eating fungi, are carnivorous mushrooms that consume worms in soil or decaying wood. When we see mushrooms such as the shaggy inkcap or oyster mushrooms, underneath within the soil or wood, there is a fungal network of filaments or hyphae, the mycelium, which is on the hunt for worms. When in contact with a worm, the fungus paralyses, poisons and digests them and their hyphae absorb the liquefied remains. The oyster mushroom is a classic example, eaten by vegans but a carnivore itself.
Mummies
Halloween month is the perfect time to write about mummified insects. There are several instances in nature where parasitic wasps inject their eggs into other creatures so that their eggs can hatch inside them. The resulting larvae then feed on the innards and grow inside their victims. Ladybirds and aphids are both known succumb to these predatory tactics. When the wasp larva inside the ladybird or aphid has eaten and grown large enough, they exit through the skin of their host to pupate. This is where the mummification comes into play as the larvae make their cocoons beneath the body of their weakened or dead host, thereby using their mummified remains as a shield. The sycamore aphid larva actually creates a form of biological glue to stick their cocoon to the underside of the dead aphid. Gruesome stuff!
Other ‘horrors’
Even birds can have a spooky side. Barn owls are ghostly white in flight with an eerie screeching call. Also, I am convinced that common snipe are responsible for many ghost or alien stories. These birds make a very unusual sound called drumming, also sometimes referred to as winnowing, as part of their courtship behavior. The noise itself is not a vocalisation, but is made by the male when they protrude two of their outer tail feathers at an angle and make diving flights to force air through the feathers, causing them to vibrate. It is a rhythmic noise, usually made at dawn or dusk, but can also be heard under the cover of darkness when it sounds particularly unearthly. This sound can travel up 0.8km and, in the still of evening, has startled many unsuspecting listeners. As for the banshee, you only have to hear a fox calling at night to begin to wonder if they are behind this frightening tale.
So, remember, it is not all ‘eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog…’ there are many other fascinating creatures found here in West Cork that we can celebrate for Halloween. I have only mentioned a few of the many natural intrigues we have. It is important to remember though, that while they may have what we perceive as frightening or gruesome aspects to them, these constituents of our local biodiversity are also beautiful, fascinating and play important roles in keeping nature in balance.
Sycamore aphid that has been turned into a “mummy” by a parasitoid wasp, most likely Dyscritulus planiceps. You can see the disc shaped cocoon that the larva has spun in which to pupate. This is often aptly described as a “shirt-button” cocoon. (Photo: Ann Haigh)
