Thursday, October 18, 2007

It came from outside!

So from time to time, living in an unspoilt tropical paradise, I get tresspassers. Usually these are either a) mosquitos (fascinating objectively but rather irritating) or b) awesome insects like this one. The other day whilst watching the baseball I was stirred from my sloth by a noise not unlike someone repeatedly flying a large toy helicopter into my window. Now usually this means something interesting from the insect world is trying to get to the light so I went outside and found this:


beetle



I have no idea what it is beyond "beetle sp." but its huge as evidenced by its scale in comparison with my hand. Those are the tips of its wings sticking out the back btw - it was a surprisingly strong flier in a lazy, drunk kind of way.


beetle2

I'd love to hear a name if anyone knows one! More home invading bugs tomorrow.

7 comments:

Neil said...

It's some kind of Scarab, perhaps Megasoma or another Dynastid? Awesome shots.

tai haku said...

longThanks Neil - I never even considered a scarab - does that mean I should be on the look out for the Mummy or do I need to do a lot more reading on this group?

Neil said...

Actually, you should probably be on the look out for a big pile of dung, although judging from the size of that guy he probably ate most of it.
:)

Neil said...

...actually looks like I need to do more reading (or rather, I just did). Turns out Dynastines feed in rotting logs unlike some of their less savory cousins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynastinae

tai haku said...

Thanks for the link - the feral cows and goats probably provide plenty of dung although rotting wood is definitely plentiful too...

More land inverts coming soon.

tai haku said...

Neil - a bit of googling suggests it might be Megasoma punctulatus - any thoughts?

Neil said...

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me! You can always try the ID services of BugGuide.net or Flickr ID Please.