#scarabaeidae

[herpsandbirds]

Found this guy. He looks and acts like a June Bug, but is shiny and diurnal‽ What is he‽ Parker County, North Texas

Beetle ID - No TX, USA:

Henlo, yuss, this is one of my favorite beetles!

Rainbow Scarab (Phanaeus vindex), family Scarabaeidae.

Rainbow Scarab (Phanaeus vindex) · iNaturalist

Species Phanaeus vindex - Rainbow Scarab - BugGuide.Net

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

With Chrysina limbata around, you won’t need a mirror! This species has an especially shiny exoskeleton, reflecting up to 97% of the light that hits it. In the wild, the mirror-like reflective surface may fool potential predators into thinking the beetle is just a drop of water- effectively serving as conspicuous camouflage.

(Image: Close-ups of Chrysina limbata by Michael Farmer)

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a ko-fi!

[bowelfly]

snug as a bug in a rug

[creatureimages]

christmas beetle season‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

wahoo! hooray!

[onenicebugperday]

Delta flower scarab, Trigonopeltastes delta, Cetoniinae

Found in the southeastern United States

Photo 1 by hydaticus, 2 by eridanxharahi, 3-6 by louiseinva, 7 by svreach460, 8-9 by tshahan, and 10 (for scale) by bugwraith

[dinictis]

Chrysina sp., focus stacked

[reanimateobjects]

[moomeecore]

met a friend in the dirt today! (scarab beetle grub)

(theres also a praying mantis & some sedge lol)

[coolbugs]

Bug of the Pride Month (BOTPM?)

❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🖤🩶🤍🤎

Happy Pride!

❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🖤🩶🤍🤎

(Serica sericea, a scarab beetle)

[ljsbugblog]

this is a very old video, the only time I've had the chance to handle a rhinoceros beetle. A camera can't truly capture how vividly red he was :]

Australian Rhinoceros Beetle, male (Xylotrupes australicus).

[palossssssand]

A small batch of beetles! I made them several months ago, but never got a chance to pick ‘em up after they were fired until now.

[herpsandbirds]

Purple Flower Beetle (Chlorocala africana oertzeni), EAT A TASTY BANANA!!!, family Scarabaeidae, found in Tanzania

Other subspecies are green.

photograph by Richard Nakamura (@richards_inverts)

[beausbugbiome]

The colors from this Theodosia rodorigezi are insane! Perfect for pride month 🏳️‍🌈✨

[bowelfly]

its time to think about critters

[escherbug]

YEAR OF THE GRUB: JANUARY

Project: Needle Felting with Wire Armature

CRAFT STORE RUNS: 2

(The sleepy but patient Lt. for scale)

This year I started a Master's Degree program in Entomology. I wanted to make sure I was still making fun things while I'm so busy (mostly reading papers and books), so I arranged a set of media-based projects centered around my favorite insect (scarab grubs), trying to complete the project by the end of the month.

I didn't quite make it this time because I ran out of supplies a couple times and made the project a good deal harder for myself than I thought, but I think that's okay. This is just for me, after all.

STEP BY STEP:

First, I used sculpting wire and a pair of pliers to twist the skeleton of the grub. I wanted to be able to move all the legs and the main line of the body. I thought I'd be able to get an easier anchor in on the felt if I covered the hard wires with pipe cleaners, but I was pretty much wrong about that.

Next, I felted a bunch of spare roving into the general shape I wanted, and felted the head and the back end of the grub on in brown. I also hand-sewed six little socks to cover the wires on the legs and secured them as well as I could to the rest of the body so they won't fall off at random. This came out messier than I'd have liked, but I think also that I should cut myself some slack for having designed and patterned most of this on the fly.

Next came felting on the bulk of the fatty, cream colored body of the grub. Part of the reason I didn't end up making my deadline was that I ran out of white/off-white wool roving, and was unable to find it in stock at any stores, so I had to order it online and wait for it to arrive in the mail (it absolutely did and honestly, the new stuff from Shepswool.com is way softer than the wool I was using and a softer color, so it was well worth the wait).

From here, mainly all that was left was detail work. I didn't get a ton of photos of this because all these steps ended up being my Sunday (day of posting), but I used a finer wire, the same pliers, and super sculpey to make gently posable antennae, mandibles, a clypeus and labrum (as well as a pair of maxillae that absolutely did not show up in the end, just much too small), baked the clay on the wires and then affixed them to the existing framework I'd set up on the head for most of the face. The mandibles are attached to the antennae, so they move together, and the clypeus/labrum and maxillae are held on by the wires supporting the mandibles. I also glued on some cute little eyes that came standard with my felting gear.

All that was left at this point was final detail work-- I didn't feel like embroidering on a ton of hairs in the end, but I embroidered on some spiracles and felted those little sclerotized buts near the head.

And voila! A needle-felted beetle grub about the size of a small ferret. Wouldn't it be nice if we had more grubs around this size?

Further notes:

1) it's nice to be making something big enough for once while felting that I didn't stab my fingers constantly! I only stabbed myself like twice.

2) I bought a multi-needle felting tool for this, but I didn't really find it helped much beyond having a safety cover. It was also super noisy to work with, so I ended up going back to using a single felting needle halfway through.

Catch you at the end of this month, hopefully having completed my February project: WATERCOLOR ILLUSTRATION!

[chronicsheepdrawing]

If my boyfriend were a bug I think he' be a Common Blue Damselfly- and he think I'd be the grub of a Western Hercules Beetle!

Thus, I decided to draw us as them!