New York Times sci­ence jour­nal­ist, Natalie Ang­ier, tack­les the ques­tion of how var­i­ous ani­mals deal with death.

Among the social insects, the need for prompt corpse man­age­ment is con­sid­ered so press­ing that there are ded­i­cated under­tak­ers, work­ers that within a few min­utes of a death will pick up the body and hoist or fly it out­side, to a safe dis­tance from hive or nest, the bet­ter to pro­tect against pos­si­ble con­ta­gious dis­ease. Hon­ey­bees are such com­pul­sive house­keep­ers that if a mouse or other large crea­ture, drawn by the warmth or promise of honey, hap­pens to make its way into the hive and die inside, the bees, unable to bod­ily remove it, will embalm it in resin col­lected from trees. “You can find mum­mi­fied mice inside bee­hives that are com­pletely pre­served right down to their whiskers,” said Gene E. Robin­son, pro­fes­sor of ento­mol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois in Urbana-Champaign.