Nut weevil
The nut weevil is a light brown beetle with a very long, thin snout, like a tiny elephant's trunk. The female's snout is as long as the rest of her body. She uses it to make a hole in a young hazelnut, where her baby will grow up.
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Fun facts
A mother lays just one egg in each hazelnut. She can fill 20 to 30 nuts.
The larva eats most of the nut in about a month, then chews a round hole and leaves.
If you find a hazelnut with a small round hole in it, a nut weevil larva has probably already moved out.
After leaving the nut, the larva digs into the ground and can stay there for more than a year before becoming a beetle.
Its colour is light brown, just like a ripe hazelnut.
Most asked questions about Nut weevil
?What is the hole in my hazelnut?
It is probably the exit hole of a nut weevil larva that grew up inside and then chewed its way out.
?How big is the nut weevil?
It is about 6 to 8.5 millimetres long.
?Is the nut weevil harmful?
Not to people, but its larvae spoil hazelnuts, so it is a pest in hazelnut orchards.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Curculio nucum
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Curculionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Curculionidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Curculio nucum (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 Lukas Jonaitis from Vilnius, Lithuania. 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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