Necrophoresis
undertakers of the insect world
Necrophoresis is a sanitation behavior found in social insects – such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites – in which they carry away the dead bodies of members of their colony from the nest or hive area. The term was introduced in 1958 by E.O. Wilson and his colleagues. The behaviour was however known from before with Pliny making the claim that ants were the only animals other than humans to bury their dead.
Description
While the strict definition of necrophoresis deals with the removal of dead nestmates only, others have extended it to the removal of corpses that include non-nestmates and even alien species. The adaptive value of the behavior is that it acts as a sanitary measure to prevent disease or infection from spreading throughout the colony.
Castes and specialization
Although any member of a colony can carry the bodies, it is usually done by designated 'undertakers'. Ant undertakers have a slightly altered development cycle, and are much more likely than other ants to handle corpse removal. They are not restricted to performing only this task, but they do exhibit different behavioral and movement patterns than other members of the colony, which assist them in this task. Non-undertaker ants may also remove dead bodies, but do so with much less consistency. Corpses will either be taken to a random point a certain distance away from the nest, or placed in a refuse pile closer to the nest, along with other waste.
“Necrophoresis” enters the record as undertakers of the insect world. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Necrophoresis, undertakers and insect can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Necrophoresis” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Necrophoresis, undertakers and insect provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q864784. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “Necrophoresis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.