Beneath the soil where college students trod each day, there is a chamber that creeps and crawls and writhes. Here, the humid air is sweet with the odor of rotten flesh and thousands of bugs devour once-living animals, piece by piece. This is UW-Madison?s dermestarium, or colony of dermestid beetles. Nearly half a million strong, the insects dine on the stringy muscle of carcasses, meticulously cleaning the bones of zoological specimens for museum displays and research.
Office of Strategic Communication