Vanishing I (American Burying Beetle)

Holly Downing

This hand-colored mezzotint is from a series of prints Holly Downing has been doing featuring vanishing species, in this case, invertebrates. Each impression is printed in black and then hand-colored by the artist. There may be slight variations between impressions.

The Center for Biological Diversity wrote: “With its shiny, black and fiery body and orange-tipped antennae, the American burying beetle is a vibrant beauty of the bug world. The insect’s occupation, though, is a little less glamorous. After sniffing out a freshly dead animal from up to two miles away, the beetle joins a mate in burying the carcass, stripping it of fur or feathers, rolling it into a ball, and covering it in oral and anal fluids to preserve it as a shelter and food source for the pair’s litter of lucky larvae.”