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Sticker of Large thistle weevil
Bug card No. 2535 of 4,939

Large thistle weevil

Cleonis pigra
Eats: PlantsBeetlesGardens and meadows6 legs

The large thistle weevil is a beetle with a long nose called a snout. It has a double V pattern on its wing cases. People even took it to North America so it could help get rid of a weed called creeping thistle.

Lives in
Europe and Asia, and brought to North America
Top speed
about 0.1 km/h (0.06 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
Its young grow up inside the roots of thistles and other daisy family plants.
For real!Photo of Large thistle weevil
Picture by Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its babies grow inside plant roots.

2

Another name for it is the sluggish weevil.

3

Scientists have spelled its name in several different ways, which caused a lot of mix-ups.

you asked

Most asked questions about Large thistle weevil

?Why was the large thistle weevil brought to North America?

To help control creeping thistle, a weed that farmers do not want.

?Is the large thistle weevil harmful?

Not to people. It only eats thistles and similar plants.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Cleonis pigra
Group
Beetles
Family
Curculionidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Curculionidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia, North America
Also known as
Sluggish weevil

Where the facts come from

  1. Cleonis pigra (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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