Together with her husband, Charles, they decided to investigate and surprisingly found a large male stag beetle repeatedly throwing down a dead snail. A smaller male was also showing interest in the shell but was driven away by the larger male.
Below are some photos shown exactly in the order in which they were taken by Charles.
Male stag beetle grabbing the snail, and lifting it quite high, ready to throw it down.
Male stag beetles do this kind of thing to a male opponent.
Note the damage inflicted to the shell.
Shot taken a split second after the stag beetle threw down the snail.
The first male promptly showed great interest, and with its mandibles tried to get a grip on the shell.
Showing interest in the shell contents? This male measured 36 mm excluding the mandibles, compare with the one above.
When he managed to lift it he promptly threw it down, thus repeating the previous day's performance with another dead snail.
I'm afraid but this time I was more than a split second too late and got a shot of the beetle walking away instead.
Click here to watch the video directly in YouTube or here to watch a shorter compressed version.
The snails (Helix aspersa) were probably killed by the slug repellent Neudorff, which contains ferric phosphate, but another repellent with meta-aldehyde had in the past also been used in the patio plant pots.
The unique observations reported here do indeed raise an awful lot of questions. Therefore it would be important to be able to repeat them in order to explain this extraordinary stag beetle behaviour.
Is anybody out there interested in doing some future experiments? Do get in touch if, like me, you want to do some simple back yard experiments, and if so then we could follow the same protocol.