Elephant beetle
The elephant beetle is a giant black rhinoceros beetle covered in fine golden hairs. The male has a long horn on his head that curves up like an elephant's trunk. That is how it got its name.
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Fun facts
Males use their horns to push and fight other males for food and mates. Females have no horns at all.
Its babies grow inside big rotting logs and can take up to three years to become beetles.
A grown-up elephant beetle lives only about one to three months.
It is busy at night and can keep its body warm even when the air gets cooler.
Cutting down the rainforest has made it rarer, because it has fewer places to live.
Most asked questions about Elephant beetle
?How big is an elephant beetle?
Usually 7 to 12 centimetres long. The biggest male ever measured was almost 14 centimetres, with his horn.
?Why is it called an elephant beetle?
The male's long head horn looks like an elephant's trunk.
?What does an elephant beetle eat?
Tree sap and ripe fallen fruit. Its grubs eat rotting wood.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Megasoma elephas
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1775
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Scarabaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Elephant beetle (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 Jbjensen1. CC0, 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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