#there would be something funny here but. the sleepytired.

[eastern-hercules-beetle]

Hey, thank you so much for identifying my buprestid earlier! I have another beetle question.

Are you able to identify these guys? I live in northern Idaho in the U.S., on the border of Idaho and Washington. The first beetle is some kind of carrion/burying beetle, specifically a kind that secretes that nasty-smelling chemical defense (it sprayed my glove when I picked it up), but I wasn't able to identify it beyond that. The second beetle I haven't tried looking up because I honestly don't know where to start, and beetle identification scares me 😅

Thank you! Bugs are wonderful 💜

the first one is nicrophorus marginatus, the margined burying beetle! visually separated from similar-looking species by their zigzag orange stripes, entirely black head, and antennae that are orange at the very end. they make small carrion into food-filled nests for their babies, like a bug pantry.

the second one is most likely necydalis diversicollis, a species with seemingly no agreed-upon common name. they have very short elytra, black wings, mostly black antennae, and either black or rusty heads. i can't be 1000% sure of this simply because it's so hard to find information about them online, but i'm still pretty confident since good sources have pictures of this species that look exactly like the one you found. very interesting species, had me fooled thinking they were a wasp (which i suspect is a defense mechanism to deter would-be predators)

the thing about beetles is that they get much more specific than, say, toads. you could theoretically ID a species with a lot of close lookalikes using only a good picture of it because of how particular it is. my general rule of thumb is, if i can't find an exact clone of the bug i'm trying to ID in pictures of a species i've looked up, it's probably not the right one. my default strategy is to do broad searches first, then refine it and sift through results until i find a match. i would go into more detail but i fear that it would make me sound insane.

thanks for the lovely buggie pictures! IDing them is very fun for me :)