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Foxes Vulpes vulpes and stag beetles Lucanus cervus
It is not just stag beetles that like to live in urban areas. Foxes also do extremely well in an urban environment and, of course, they eat stag beetles, unfortunately.
Stag beetle remains predated by foxes and, right, a fox scat.
Photo by Maria Fremlin.
The foxes leave the stag beetle bodies a bit mangled up, particularly the broken mandibles are very characteristic; therefore it is easy to tell them apart from the work of magpies. Once I saw a freshly predated male stag beetle that had also been scent marked with urine; probably I interrupted that meal!
They also raid their nests; below is a picture of a dug up nest.
The raided nest is the central area to the right of the plastic bag.
The inset shows the typical pillow shaped stag beetle larvae pellets, plus a couple of wing cases.
Photo by Maria Fremlin, 24 August 2008.
No larvae were found only remains of their presence.
Last modified: Wed Jul 13 15:38:55 BST 2011
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