Creature Feature: Giraffe Weevil.

Insects are automatically nightmare fuel when it comes to creature design. With the possible exception of butterflies, there is no insect on the planet that cannot be made into an object of terror. Even harmless, annoying things can be magnified into monsters. Weevils, which are already terrifying if seen up close, reach the peak of their horror monster potential in this fellow:

This bug-meets-Apatosaurus creature is called a giraffe weevil (Trachelophorus giraffa) . It is native only to Madagascar, second only to Australia for the title of "World's Weirdest Island." They are herbivorous like all weevils, partial to seeds and fruit. New Zealand also has a "giraffe weevil," so just to be clear, this one is from the island with happy lemurs.

The giraffe weevil cannot help but stand out. That long neck on the males is 2-3 times the length of the females. It is almost an inch log - not the record for weevils, but still quite big for one. It has a striking, red and black palette. No, it is not poisonous as far as my sources know. Seeing a giraffe weevil in the wild must be amazing. The bright  color and long neck both make it unforgettable.



This long neck is for one very important purpose: Mating. Specifically, male giraffe weevils fight each other with their long necks. The females have much shorter necks, and referee the neck-fights between the two males. The winner gets laid. Fair enough.

This is not to say that the ladies of the species are not at all interesting. Unusually for insects, the female lays exactly one egg after mating. She then encases it in a tube cut from a leaf. The leaf is then cut such that two edges mesh together-  effectively, primitive Velcro. The leaf nest then drops to the forest floor, where the weevil will hatch, grow, and repeat the process.  Giraffe weevils: males look freaky, females invented Velcro before people.

Creature Feature: Bookworms/Common Furniture Beetle.

A lot of people reading this have probably heard the phrase "bookworm." For those of you who haven't, one, you're probably living under a rock, and two, it means someone who really likes books - a bibliophile. They are most often depicted as nerdy little worms of some sort, often comically reading a random book. So are bookworms a real, actual species of insect?

Answer: Yes and no. There are a number of insects and invertebrates that could be called 'bookworms.' Silverfish and cockroaches are quite fond of hiding in between pages of old books and taking a bite. There are bugs called "booklice" which are not really lice at all, instead being flying insects that have been around since the Permian. Even rodents occasionally chew on books. Some of them are interested in the glue; others tunnel through the pages like wood; rodents will gnaw on anything to keep their teeth filed down. Really, especially in the modern age, a book is a very safe hiding place with some food lying around. There's no reason for bugs not to invade such a place.

Source.

All sorts of things can eat books, but the term 'bookworm' usually refers to the larvae of one of two beetle species: the common furniture beetle (Anobium punctatum) and the death watch beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum).  Even then, these two are usually more interested in the wood around the books than the book itself. Books are made from trees just like wood, and so happen to be on the menu. They are like junk food to these baby beetles.

On that note, take bookworms seriously, especially if the larvae in question belong to the common furniture beetle. Beetles called "bookworms" will fly in through any little crevice and lay their eggs near books. These are, however, wood-boring beetles; any wood that isn't made from "heartwood" (the inner wood of the tree) is prone to infestation, as is any untreated wood. 

Source.

The most obvious signs of bookworms are, of course, little larvae and tunnels in your books. Look for 'dust' on your bookshelves if you think your wood might be infested. To prevent them to begin with, keep your books in a clean, dry place. If you think you have a whole library's worth of little grubs, there are a few chemicals, including tobacco, that you can use to fumigate the area. Do your homework before trying to get rid of other bookworms.

Although some of the cartoony bookworm characters are quite benign and adorable, this is definitely not the case in real life. Real bookworms can wreck an entire library without checking out anything. Nature sees paper as "very thin, dead trees." Why shouldn't stuff take advantage of it?

Creature Feature: Ironclad Beetles.

"Fur is murder!" cries PETA. Ever since we started thinking that killing animals wasn't cool, especially for luxurious items like fur coats, there has been a certain stigma attached to wearing another animals skin. PETA is lucky that farm and fur animals tend to be cute and cuddly; we don't want to see what they would do about this if they suddenly took an interest in insects:



Just in case you missed it, that beetle is still alive. It has jewelry on its wings, but it's still a living insect. Fortunately, as beetles are not cute and cuddly as piglets, so PETA has not gotten to this practice yet. Also, making ironclad beetles into brooches is mostly done in Mexico, a place that would throw PETA into fits of spastic rage with or without beetle bling.

 

The beetle in question is called an "ironclad beetle." It eats wood (dead or alive) and fungus, which admittedly comes with eating dead wood. They are native to Mexico down to Venezuela.There are several genera of ironclad beetles, but the one used in jewelry is Zopherus.

When we say "ironclad," we mean it. Ironclad beetles have some of the toughest exoskeletons of all arthropods in general, but the members of the genus Zopherus ("dusky" or "gloomy" in Greek) are so sturdy that they can handle being living bling. Their shell is so solid that they cannot fly. They also only troll you if stepped on, playing dead and then laughing as they scurry away without harm. Hell, even when they are good and dead, entomologists and bug collectors need to use a drill to get through that shell.

Read: THIS REQUIRED POWER TOOLS.

The jewelry probably does not bug these beetles at all. Even if PETA did for some reason take up "beetle rights" like they have with lobsters, the beetles would just scurry along their coats going "meh" and eating pieces of old furniture. They would look totally fabulous while doing so. 

"They Actually Eat That:" Mealworms, Crickets, Scorpions...

Yes, I just ate real larvae covered in cheese powder. Yes, they really did taste just like chicken with some cheese sprinkled on. You are not a hardcore reptile keeper until you have eaten lizard food. Period.

Mealworms are most commonly known for being fish bait and reptile food. They are the larvae of the darkling beetle Tenebrio molitor, which has one of the most villainous names of any insect. Seriously, tell me that you can't see a Rowling fan's evil wizard character being named after the beetle that mealworms become when they grow up. Awesome name is awesome; it's a shame their main goal in life is to be food for something else.

Clearly an evil mastermind.

Larvets, Cricket Lickits, and other reptile food for people are made and marketed by Hotlix. This California-based company specializes in what China has been doing for centuries: Turning bugs into snack food.

Made in California, NOT China.

Hooo boy, does Hotlix have a variety of treats if you've ever wanted to try a scorpion or other arthropod.  They take chocolate-covered ants to new heights, have 'amber' candy with real bugs inside, and if you can feed it to your lizard, they have stuck it in a lollipop. OK, no dead mice; you'll have to go back in time to ancient Rome to get those. Or Korea, but that's next week's endeavor.

If bugs are not your thing (they all taste like chicken, and I don't like chicken), Hotlix has a few other nature-related treats. Their non-insect offerings range from rather innocent things like aquarium candy to eye-popping eyeball lollipops. These guys also make exclusively-labeled products for traveling exhibits and such, so next time I'm at the Field, I might get more interesting insectoid edibles.

Creature Feature: Photuris.

OK, I lied a little. There is one genus of insect that comes fairly close to the goings-on at "Roppongi." The problem is that humans fail really, really hard at interspecies sex.

"Find hole, insert hard-on." How hard can it be, right?

Answer: A LOT harder than that. Every species has certain behaviors - scents, pheromones, feather displays, and other mating rites - that keep them from successfully breeding with another species. Humans see things very differently from most of the species that they would like to mess around with (with many mammals having better smell and/or hearing), and thus miss critical hormonal cues. There are ways to make animals more than happy to do their thing, but in this case, rape is just easier for most humans.

Yeeeaaaaah...nature has a whole genus of bugs that do not just flip mating rites the bird, but abuse them. This is not done by some horrible new species of killer, flesh-eating wasp. The culprit is a firefly that is widespread over the continental U.S. and Canada.

Yes, a firefly.



Wait a minute. Everybody in the U.S. and some parts of Canada has seen these guys. Some elementary school kids had a huge drive to make Photuris pennsylvanica up there the state bug of Pennsylvania. Their larvae are called glowworms because they glow in the dark. They make summer nights awesome. Are these really the insects who have crossed the interspecies sex barrier?

Well, yes and no. Fireflies in the genus Photuris are not interested in getting it on with different fireflies. The females of Photuris still copy the light patterns of Photinus females to attract Photinus males. (That enough Greek for you? Good.)

Then they eat said males.

Photuris fireflies are not called "femme fatale" fireflies for nothing. The female Photuris isn't even interested in getting it on - all she wants is lucibufagin, a bad-tasting chemical that she can only get from eating a Photinus firefly. 

I guess this means you aren't calling me?

Male Photuris fireflies have a different problem: How does he find a mate when she's attracting men of another genus? Lucky guess. It's literally a shot in the dark when a male Photuris is looking for a voracious, poisonous woman. Some males have also taken to copying another species's lights, just to get her to come hither a little bit faster.

Insects are actually really, really good at stealing secrets. There are insects upon insects, as well as a few arachnids (remember Portia?) that live by cracking another bug's code for something. There are flies that trick ants into giving them food, parasites that make bees vomit a little bit of food, and a million other tricksters that would make great computer hackers. If Google was managed by insects, the internet would be dead within a week.

As for what a scientist has to say on this miraculous code-cracking?

"We humans are slow learners, but we're starting to catch on."