In January 2016, Evan Buechley found one of his carcasses in Utah's Great Basin had disappeared.

The conservation biologist, who leaves animal corpses out in the desert and sets up cameras to record scavengers, figured a pack of coyotes had dragged the 50-pound calf away.

But after a short search yielded no sign of the carcass, Buechley downloaded the camera’s images to see if he could find some clues.

What he saw, no one had ever seen before.

Over the course of five days, the photos reveal, a single American badger excavated tunnels beneath the calf carcass until the whole thing collapsed into a pit. The badger then covered the carcass completely and constructed a burrow beside it, inside which it