Opening abdomens:

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving. Here this idea, whose memory lingers still over the kisses of man, is realised in its primal simplicity. No sooner has the union been accomplished than the male's abdomen opens, the organ detaches itself, dragging with itthe massof the entrails; the wings relax , and as though struck by lightning, the emptied body turns and turns on itself and sinks down into the abyss.

[Maurice Maeterlinck from The Life of the Bee 1901]

Images by Ernst Haeckel: