Cowboy beetle
The cowboy beetle is a large yellow-brown beetle from Australia. When it flies or gets scared, it makes a loud buzz that sounds just like a big wasp. That clever trick keeps hungry animals away.
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Fun facts
The girls are usually a little bigger than the boys.
Mums lay their eggs in damp places in or near rotting logs.
The larva builds its pupa case out of mud and rotting bits.
The new beetles come out in summer.
Most asked questions about Cowboy beetle
?Can a cowboy beetle sting?
No. It buzzes like a wasp to scare enemies, but it has no sting.
?What does a cowboy beetle eat?
The beetles drink flower nectar, and the larvae eat rotting wood.
?How big is a cowboy beetle?
It is about 2 to 2.5 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Chondropyga dorsalis
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Scarabaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Chondropyga dorsalis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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