Photos of figeater beetles
Every year my fig tree produces lots of delicious figs. I love cutting them open to see the shocking red-purple, raspberry-jam flavored fruit inside. The stickiness of the fruit and the crunchiness of the seeds is a heavenly combination.My photos of figeater beetlesFigeater beetles come to feast on the fruit of my fig tree every year. I never bother them, because they are gorgeous and they eat only a small fraction of the tree's seasonal harvest. I like the loud droning sound they make when they fly, too.
Besides, these creatures have been eating figs longer than human beings have been on earth and they don't understand our rules of property ownership. Really, they are sharing the figs with me, not the other way around.
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The biologist J. S. B. Haldane liked to say that if biology had taught him anything about the nature of the Creator, it was that he had “an inordinate fondness for beetles.â€
Nice pictures. I dig these beetles; they fly so badly, crashing into random objects in the yard. Never knew they were called Figeaters - we always called them Junebugs, though I understand now from a little online digging that true Junebugs are smaller, an allover brown and not nearly as pretty.
Mark, those brown patches in your lawn are probably caused by the larvae of these 'June Bugs'. Then again you may not have a lawn...
BTW, with the link provided, flickr sez I must be signed-in to see your pix.
Um, sorry to geek out but what is the camera setup?
The camera I used is just a little Canon PowerShot SD1000. It has a pretty good macro lens, at least for me.
Fig wasps are cooler.
Each species of fig has a species of wasp to go with it, which is required for pollination. The two have coevolved.
Do I need to actually join Flicker to look at the pictures?
When I click on a link it says that I have to sign in. Am I missing something?
Last year the beetles descended on my blackberry stand. When I picked the blackberries it jostled the bush slightly but set the whole shebang buzzing with perturbed beetles. Fascinating and a little creepy.
Wow. They're so beautiful. I've never seen any out here in PS. You get all the pretty bugs and we get all the ones with too many legs. I got a solfugid bite on my knee the other day. The pic in the link is from Iraq, but they look exactly like the ones here. Fortunately I was bitten by a two-incher. I've seen them bigger than my hand.
Great piece Mark. My dad has three figs on his property and I never knew the names of these beetles before now. I guess "figeater" seemed all too obvious. Thanks.
that is amazing detail on the beetles and fig trees. you can see the little peach fuzz on the leaves!
Unfortunately, my camera is so advanced its motherf*ing complicated to take a decent photo. I just want the super streamlined camera that won't take blurry photos. I'll be looking into that soon.
holy f on the scorpio bugs, antinous!
#7, I agree. I'm more into hymenopterans too. But the beetles are pretty nifty.
S'funny, but I'd always considered the inside of a fig to be *fig*-flavoured, and nothing at all like a raspberry.
Thanks a lot, Anitinous. No way now will I be able to sleep tonight!
FYI: The website on camel spiders, linking to a "Camel spider bite" - that's a shot of a doctor removing packing gauze from a drained and cleaned cyst, not a horrible bleeding wound with strange substances issuing from it.
If he had a cyst, he had an infection, but the doctor would not be able to tell the source of the infection. He may just have had a zit that went bad, a tiny scrape, a splinter, or yes, some kind of bite - possibly from an insect.
The only thing they would have pulled out of the cyst would be puss (with varying amounts of fat in it) and blood (possibly clotted).
Cysts are totally disgusting and terribly painful, and yes, they generally shouldn't be stitched shut; instead, they should be packed and left to heal "by second intention" ie by filling in from the bottom and sides, not by stitching them up.
Doctors in North America are terribly prone to blaming cysts on the legs on "brown recluse spider bites", even though the swelling and infection would make it totally impossible to see any bite marks, the patient never saw anything or felt anything bite him, and the patient hasn't been anywhere within 200 miles of a state that MIGHT be a habitat for brown recluse spiders.
I expect that being deployed to Iraq wouldn't change this particular tendency, only shifting to a scapegoat that actually exists in this hemisphere.
This is a pet peeve of mine.
This concludes this random rant/educational moment.
Secret Life of Plants - it completely depends upon the profile/upload selections of the person who owns the account. They can choose to have their pics private, viewable to members only, or viewable to anyone.
Cpt. Tim #1: Haldane, who was an outspoken atheist and communist for much of his life, denied having ever made that remark.
Personally, if I was credited with that quote I'd pretend I did say it.
--Charlie
I always called those beetles "Scarabs" since I've never owned a real Fig tree; it's nice to have a couple more names for them.
In my case, it's a nice clean vampire bite on my leg. I have the culprit, and his jaws match the wound nicely. Fortunately, solfugids are non-venomous, but they do have the most powerful jaws per body weight of anything in the animal kingdom. Oh, and they can run fast enough to kill and eat birds.
Nom Nom Nom
Well, I know from personal experience that the bite from a brown recluse can wake your ass up in a hurry. Especially if that's where it bit you. Twice. At 3am. Ouchie ow ow ow.
It must have climbed up my pajama leg after I went to bed - bit me when I rolled over on it, although apparently that's a reflex action, so it had no choice. Still, gives me the shudders to think about it. And yes, I positively ID'd what was left of the sucker after I shook him out of my pants.
No crater wound, luckily. But two nasty bites that took a few months to quit hurting and fade away, in a really bad spot for someone who rides herd on a desk all day.
Lizzle@: "S'funny, but I'd always considered the inside of a fig to be *fig*-flavoured, and nothing at all like a raspberry."
There are thousands of variety of figs. In fact, it might be the first plant cultivated by people. The different types of figs have different flavors.
I'm just impressed that there are any figs grown in N. America that don't suck, at least compared to those grown in the Mediterranean.
Anonymous "Fig wasps are cooler. Each species of fig has a species of wasp to go with it, which is required for pollination. The two have coevolved."
And there are parasitic wasps that live in those wasps and there are nematodes that live in both of those. Nature is weird. Just thinking about it is enough to give you gas.
Maybe that's just me.