What are beetles behaviors?
Many of the weirdest beetle behaviors have to do with finding and consuming food. Some types eat dead animals or decomposing plant matter, others eat fungi or wood and there are types that eat other beetles and small insects.
What do Bess beetles do?
Coprophagiac Cuisine. Bess beetles inhabit the layer of rotting trees found between the bark and the heart of the tree. They chew the decaying wood but can’t digest the cellulose like termites can. A fungus that grows on their fecal matter is consumed to provide their real nourishment.
Do Bess beetles have eyes?
Most noticeable to students are the beetle’s strong mouthparts (mandibles) and feathery antennae. Beetles have compound eyes, which means the two big shiny eyes on the head are actually made out of many smaller parts. Bess Beetles can make 14 different sounds rubbing their wings together.
How do you care for a bess beetle?
Keep the bess beetles in a well-ventilated plastic container, provide them with decaying hardwood from oak, elm, or other deciduous trees (no conifers), and mist the wood and container several times a week to maintain the moisture. It may also help to keep some sphagnum moss on top of the wood to maintain the moisture.
What makes beetle unique?
A distinctive feature of beetles is their front pair of wings, which are thick, hard, and opaque, without the veins characteristic of most other insect wings. These forewings, called elytra (singular, elytron), serve as protective wing covers for a second pair of functional wings underneath.
How long do Bess beetles live?
Adult bess beetles may live for several years. Bess beetles spend the majority of their lives inhabiting rotten logs. They appear to feed on logs that are approximately two years old until all of the cambium layer (area between the bark and wood) has been ingested.
How can you tell if a bess beetle is male or female?
Check the sternites’ structure to determine whether the beetle is a male or female. On a female, there is little or no separation between the sternites. On a male, there is a membrane between the sternites that houses the male copulatory organ, or the male beetle’s sexual organ.
Can you keep a beetle as a pet?
Beetles are so common as pets that even 100 yen stores sell supplies during summer.
How does a Bess Beetle get its food?
Bess beetles chew wood, which is indirectly a food source. Unlike termites, bess beetles don’t have symbiotic bacteria in their gut that help them digest the cellulose in decaying wood. Bess beetles process wood in their digestive system, and then a fungus grows on the beetles’ feces.
How are baby bess beetles at a disadvantage?
Baby bess beetles are at an even greater digestive disadvantage, because their mandibles aren’t strong enough to chew wood and they lack gut microorganisms. So mama and papa bess beetle start their babies out in a cradle made of masticated wood and frass.
How big are bess beetles and how big do they get?
They’re hefty insects, often well over 3 cm long, with the massive mandibles you’d expect from a beetle that eats wood. But rest assured, they don’t bite, and don’t even grab hold of your fingers with their feet the way scarab beetles do.
Why are bess beetles called horned passalus beetles?
The BugLady has been wanting to do an episode about Bess beetles for a long time, but she didn’t have a picture of one (many thanks to BugFans Tom and Joe for sharing). Why Bess beetles? Because they exhibit what’s called “pre-social behavior,” and they vocalize like crazy, and they have lots of names, and then there’s the phoresy.
