Interesting stuff from Laredo, TX

Kathleen Moon kmoon at ucla.edu
Thu May 27 01:39:48 EDT 1999


Doug Yanega wrote:
> 
> > Two beetles (black and
> >squatty, about 2.5 cm long) were attached to a small sphere - with a 3 cm
> >diameter - made of what looked like dried dirt. [snip]
> > I'm assuming the sphere was
> >some sort of egg case?
> 
> As Anne already mentioned, these were dung beetles rolling a little dung
> ball which they would eventually lay an egg in. In addition to reverence by
> the Egyptians (my understanding was that it was a matter of being a
> metaphor for the sun going across the sky and/or rebirth), one early
> taxonomist linked them to Greek mythology by naming one genus "Sisyphus",
> after the mythological person condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill
> in the afterlife.
> 
> >I found another similar
> >beetle close by, and picked it up - only to be blasted by an offensive odor.
> >I suppose these beetles are just another in the family of "stink bugs",
> >although they were new to me.
> 
> Sounds like a tenebrionid, maybe Eleodes.
> 
> >I also saw a few impressive larvae, one which I know I've seen before but
> >didn't have a field guide handy.  It was large (over 5 cm) and red with long
> >tentacle-like appendages.
> 
> Could it have been a _Battus_ larva? But I'd suppose you'd recognize one?

Battus sp?  What species are you thinking of, Doug?  Aren't Battus
philenor blue with segment-centered red dots down the middle of the
back?  To tell you the cold truth, I don't know the other Battus species
at all.

Pierre A Plauzoles
ae779 at lafn.org
(using my wife's Internet access due to technical difficulties with my
own)


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