Am hoping someone can ID this critter

[maggiepie]

Have never seen anything like this before, am wondering if it is a good guy or a bad guy.
Any help appreciated.

[shelagh]

Good or Bad Helen he is certainly Ugly.

[zephirine]

Try American Carrion Beetle...
Zeph

[Maggi Young]

well done, Zeph!
so he may be ugly, but he is useful !

[maggiepie]

Zephirine, you never cease to astonish me with your knowledge.
Thank you!!!

 

[zephirine]

You shouldn't, Helen: I happen to have come across the same question on another forum, and someone had given the answer...just a question of (short term) memory, that's all!
(Maybe I shouldn't have confessed it,and kept my magic aura?...lol)
Thanks for the compliment, though!
Zeph

[fredg]

I appear to have a problem, I don't find it ugly at all 

Wonderful name too Necrophila americana

[Lesley Cox]

I agree Fred. I think he's quite handsome, but the name? Dead American?  or Loves Dead Americans?

[maggiepie]

Zephirine, you can keep your magic aura 

Fred and Lesley, I found him quite handsome too, in fact the texture on his back was really pretty.
Now I am wondering what attacted him, hope there's nothing dead out there.

[Maggi Young]

It could just be a dead mouse, Helen.... but they eat funghi, too, so there may be a toadstool colony he's dining on.

[fredg]

I find this interesting.

The beetle is known to engage in mutualistic phoresis with non-flying mites of the genus Poecilochirus. Upon arrival at a carcass, these mites drop from the beetle and begin eating the eggs and larvae of the flies that preceded the beetles (and continue to lay more eggs even as the beetles are active). They will eventually return to the adults and be transported to the next carcass. Some of their young will hitch a ride with the beetles' young upon their emergence from the pupal stage.

[maggiepie]

Maggi, I think it must be funghi it is after, lots of weird looking things around at the moment.
I think I would smell a dead mouse.

Fred, I found that very interesting too, actually made me think about Grisham ( the bug man) in CSI.

[gote]

They may be after bonemeal too. I forgot to take in a small "bowl" of bonemeal. It rained a little and when I remembered he bowl a few days later, there were several of them in it. 
Göte
PS
The mite info s really interesting

[cohan]

i haven't seen these, but we have some other types of carrion beetles around..we were having mouse issues around (and under?) the house a year or two back, and some of these (other-i forget now, but think they had some fancy orange/red markings) beetles were getting in the house..quite pretty and very necessary in the ecosystem, great outdoors, but not at all cool indoors--especially if they land or are knocked down, and then those mites start scurrying everywhere (using this icon as it seems to me, a pukey face)