Have you ever wondered which insect is the largest on the planet? It is known that the largest of the mammals is the whale. Among land animals - an elephant. And who is the champion among beetles? Entomologists are still arguing over whom to award the palm: the Hercules bug or the woodcutter. The thing is how to approach this issue.
Hercules basically all reach 17 cm. Most lumberjacks have a length of 15-16 cm (along with the jaws), but sometimes individuals come across up to twenty and even twenty-two centimeters! Just imagine: a titan lumberjack beetle reaches the size of a guinea pig! There are people who are panicky afraid of insects, imagine their horror at the sight of such a giant.
However, not only the size of this insect catches up the horror. The woodcutter-titan is armed with two powerful chews, which, if desired, easily break a pencil like nippers. In addition, this powerful monster is able to fly and, to top it all, leads a nocturnal lifestyle. It’s good that his temper is calm and peaceful. But it’s all the same unpleasant when at night in the jungle someone sits on your head the size of a hamster and with a tusk, like a rhino. At the same time, someone falls into a state of shock, and someone is ready to pay up to a thousand American dollars for the dried shell of such a giant.
The lumberjack beetle lives throughout the Amazon. He is met in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Bolivia and in the middle of Brazil. It is found in moist longline forests. He is extremely sensitive to light and does not fall into the light traps that entomologists set up. It is also difficult to study the beetle because it spends most of its life in the state of a larva, and it only takes 3-5 weeks for it to be a giant. And the titan’s nocturnal lifestyle does not play into the hands of scientists. During the day, the insect is sprinkled in rotten stumps or under foliage, and with the onset of dusk it creeps up the plants to spread its wings and take off at an elevation.
The lumberjack beetle is also interesting in that, despite its terrible chewing, it eats nothing. The nutrients accumulated during his youth (when he was a larva) are enough to last about a month, lay eggs and die. Scientists involved in the study of this insect can in no way come to an agreement on how the larvae of the beetle look. Nothing is known about how the caterpillars develop, since they have never caught the eye of scientists. However, the Amazonia Indians, who on occasion use the beetle larvae for food, claim that the caterpillars are approximately 25-36 centimeters in length, and they must be found in the roots or on the stumps of dead or dying old trees. Caterpillar pupae also become in the soil.
How much time a woodcutter beetle lives in a larva state and how many days he spends in cockles, no one knows. The Indians were not interested in this issue, and scientists can not find these larvae. However, adult insects are more or less studied. As already mentioned, only a few grow to real giants. The largest specimens are females. Their carapace is brown-brown or tar-brown, and on both sides of the pronotum there are three menacingly pointed spines. These military “decorations” serve only for demonstrative repelling of enemies. A mustache is almost half the body of the insect above the beetle’s notched eyes.
Lumberjack beetle is an extremely rare insect. Due to the fact that the natives consume the caterpillars of this giant for food, their population is rapidly declining. The beetle has relatives, however, of more modest growth. However, they are on the verge of extinction. In Fiji, the natives completely "ate" the barbel - the endemic of these places. Its copies can now be seen only in dried form in some collections. In the middle zone, a distant relative of the Amazonian giant can be found in Crimea, represented by the Crimean ground beetle.