![]() ![]() These creatures are called Hercules Beetles for a reason. Instead, the males appear to be vying for control of the best positions at a feeding site-such as a nice sap flow on a tree trunk or a particularly juicy piece of fruit. Scientists have been studying beetle horns for more than a century, says Ratcliffe, but there’s still much waiting to be discovered.įor instance, we know Hercules beetles use their shiny, scimitar-like horns to grapple with other males and fling them off trees-but the jousts aren’t over females, precisely. “They’re real-life Transformers.” My, What Big Horns You Have “They’re amazing,” says Pearson, who hatched some eastern Hercules beetles earlier this year. The larva stores its own waste to construct a pupal chamber, inside which it transitions into a hard-shelled beetle. In fact, Pearson says then when you see a picture of a massive beetle grub, about one-third of what you’re looking at is actually feces. “Beetles will basically create a chamber that’s like a cocoon, except that they build it out of soil and their own poop.” “A caterpillar will spin a cocoon out of silk that they make with their mouthparts,” says Gwen Pearson, an entomologist at the University of Purdue. But did you know beetles go through a similar, though slightly less palatable, transformation? Most people know some version of the caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis story. “The larvae for those in South America are basically the size of a Polish sausage," says Ratcliffe. ( See amazing insect pictures.)īut to truly understand these insects and their heft, you need to watch the video. “ Dynastes hercules, the Hercules beetle which occurs in Central and South America and the West Indies, is the largest scarab in the world," says Brett Ratcliffe, a scarab beetle expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The time-lapse video above, shot by insect hobbyist Hirofumi Kawano, provides a glimpse into the jaw-dropping journey each Hercules beetle embarks upon from grub to giant. While the North American Hercules beetles can reach three inches in length, it’s their southern cousins that truly impress, getting to up to seven inches long. Yes, we are talking about Hercules beetles-some of the largest flying insects on Earth. Over the next few weeks, these larvae will shape-shift into ponderous insects, whose males have a can opener for a forehead and a name previously owned by a Roman demigod. ![]() White, wriggly grubs about the size of a human thumb are walling themselves off inside rotting logs. A transformation is taking place across North America. ![]()
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