Subject: Scarab rhino squeaker mystery
Location: Townsville Australia
January 9, 2017 6:46 pm
Dear bugman,
We are in northern Queensland Au (nr Townsville) and found this beautiful beetle we can’t find with online searching. It is light brown, body is a little less than 2cm long and it has a very fancy rhino like head. It squeaks like an old wind up toy I think when it feels threatened and tries to dig / nibble quickly through anything.
Signature: Holly and Jake
Dear Holly and Jake,
We found some really close images of Earth Boring Dung Beetles in the family Geotrupidae from Australia, but alas, those pages seem to no longer be active, yet the images still exist in the search engines. This Csiro Entomology page is the best we are able to provide, and it states: “Members of this family are closely related to scarab beetles but can be distinguished from the later as they have one extra segment (11 in total) on their antennae, and the last 3 segments form a distinctive circular club. They are very stoutly built beetles and range in size from 8-30 millimetres in length. Most adults are reddish-brown to brown in colour, although a few may be black. The head and pronotum of male geotrupids is often adorned with prominent horns and as such members of this species are often called rhinoceros beetles. ”
Hi Daniel,
Thank you so much for identifying the beetle for us, we really appreciate it. Nice to know more about it too. Thanks again!