Chestnut weevil
The chestnut weevil is a beetle with a very long, thin snout, a bit like a tiny elephant's trunk. The mother uses it to drill a hole into a chestnut. She lays her egg inside, and the baby grows up eating the nut.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its scientific name elephas means elephant, because of its long snout.
Its eggs hatch in only five to seven days.
When the chestnut falls, the grub chews its way out and digs into the soil.
Some grubs wait in the ground for several years before they become beetles.
In some places, up to 9 out of 10 chestnuts can have a grub inside.
Most asked questions about Chestnut weevil
?Why is there a worm in my chestnut?
It is probably a chestnut weevil grub. The mother beetle laid an egg inside the nut.
?Is the chestnut weevil harmful?
It is harmless to people, but it can spoil many chestnuts.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Curculio elephas
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Curculionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Curculionidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Curculio elephas (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 gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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