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Sticker of Yellow velvet beetle
Bug card No. 4881 of 4,939

Yellow velvet beetle

Lepturobosca chrysocoma
Eats: Nectar and pollenBeetlesForests and woods6 legs

The yellow velvet beetle is a longhorn beetle covered in a thick coat of golden hairs. It looks soft like velvet. In summer it visits flowers and helps them by carrying pollen.

Lives in
Canada from coast to coast and up to the Yukon, and Montana and Wyoming in the United States
Length
1 to 2 cm (0.39 to 0.79 in)
Top speed
about 0.36 km/h (0.22 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not sting.
What does it eat?
Adults feed on flowers in summer. The larvae eat rotting wood of trees like spruce and poplar.
For real!Photo of Yellow velvet beetle
Picture by Judy Gallagher. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Yellow velvet beetle about 2 cm long (0.79 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 3 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 10 seconds

How big is Yellow velvet beetle compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Pollen sticks to its hairy coat and gets carried to other flowers, which helps plants make seeds.

2

Its larvae grow up in rotting wood of black spruce and poplar trees.

3

It lives all across Canada, even in the far north.

you asked

Most asked questions about Yellow velvet beetle

?Is the yellow velvet beetle dangerous?

No. It is a harmless, fuzzy beetle that visits flowers.

?How big is the yellow velvet beetle?

About 10 to 20 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Lepturobosca chrysocoma
Named by
Kirby, 1837
Group
Beetles
Family
Cerambycidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Cerambycidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Golden flower longhorn beetle, Golden-haired flower longhorn

Where the facts come from

  1. Lepturobosca chrysocoma (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 Judy Gallagher. 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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More from the same group: Beetles

Also at home here: Forests and woods

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