Rhinoceros Beetles — the full story At first glance Rhinoceros or Rhino Beetles might seem a little antisocial, but they are not only harmless but truly fascinating. You can help look after Rhino Beetles in your Backyard Get to know your rhinos. Be a Backyard Buddy Rhino Beetles get along so well with humans that they are even kept as pets in some parts of the world.
Rhino Beetles love: Organic mulch. Old fruit and veggies. Fresh young tree shoots, especially Poinciana after summer rains. Cold or very dry climates. Love rivals, the source of many bitter tree-top battles. Be a Buddy to Rhino Beetles Try to: Plant a few Poinciana trees to bring rhino bugs into the area, and make sure you keep them healthy.
Keep composting. Rhinos might look tough, but the chemicals in insect repellents are definitely not rhino-friendly. Feel free to pick up a rhino buddy, just be gentle and wash your hands thoroughly first. The antennae have 10 segments, and on many species the antennae are elbowed. The jaws of male stag beetles are enlarged, imposing pincers that are used for fighting over females.
The pincers of females, though less spectacular, are still well-developed. The larvae of stag beetles are whitish, C-shaped grubs that live in rotting wood. The heads are often brownish or black, and they have three pairs of legs.
They look a lot like the larvae of scarabs and other beetles. Just about any creature with a jaw can potentially bite, and will, in defense. The larvae are important decomposers of dead wood, which cleans up the forests and improves soil. Stag Beetles. Field Guide Aquatic Invertebrates. Butterflies and Moths. Land Invertebrates. Reptiles and Amphibians. Stag beetles and their larvae are quite harmless and are a joy to watch.
As well as reading our stag beetle facts, please help us protect this threatened British species by telling us about where they live near you and by making your garden stag beetle friendly. Male beetles appear to have huge antlers. They are actually over-sized mandibles, used in courtship displays and to wrestle other male beetles. Adult males vary in size from 35mm — 75mm long and tend to be seen flying at dusk in the summer looking for a mate. Female beetles are smaller at between mm long, with smaller mandibles.
They are often seen on the ground looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. The beetle most often mistaken for a female stag beetle is the lesser stag beetle. However, lesser stags are black all over with matt wing cases, while female stag beetles have shiny brown wing cases.
Lesser stag beetles tend to have a much squarer overall look. A fully-grown stag beetle larva grub can be up to mm long. They are nearly always found below ground and can be as deep as half a metre down. Stag beetles live in woodland edges, hedgerows, traditional orchards, parks and gardens throughout Western Europe including Britain — but not Ireland. Stag beetles are relatively widespread in southern England and live in the Severn valley and coastal areas of the southwest.
Elsewhere in Britain they are extremely rare or even extinct. Female stag beetles prefer light soils which are easier to dig down into and lay their eggs. Newly emerging adults also have to dig their way up through the soil to reach the surface, therefore areas like the North and South Downs, which are chalky, have very few stag beetles.
Beetles use their horns to grab other beetles, lift them in the air, and even throw them off trees. Sometimes a beetle will slide its horn underneath another beetle and flip it over. He finds the female underground, mates with her, and sneaks away before the guard notices. Emlen thinks that hornless males might be naturally better at sneaking through underground tunnels than the horned beetles are. Large horns can slow a beetle down because they scrape the tunnel walls.
And without horns, a beetle might run faster and more quietly underground. Scientists have studied adult-beetle horns for a long time. But Moczek found something surprising when he looked at immature beetles, called larvae. In the species that he studied, the large male larvae grew horns—but so did the female and smaller male larvae. When these beetles matured, their horns disappeared. To answer this question, he raised beetle larvae in the lab.
Larvae normally grow inside little balls of packed dung, called brood balls. Moczek made artificial brood balls for his beetles by collecting cow dung and squeezing out the moisture with cheesecloth. Beetles crawl around in cow dung.
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