About a year ago, I made a post about life lessons taught through nature. The post featured a photo of a Hercules beetle I saw walking around my neighborhood. In the post, I mentioned some regret about not keeping the beetle for a temporary pet for my son. Well, fast forward to this year and we were given another chance at it.
My wife found this little guy walking around by her work, and I asked her to catch it for my boy.
So she brought him home and we went to start making a home for him. My son picked a name for him and chose the name Vulcan, after the Roman god of stone. The first night, we didn't have a good spot for him. So we had to put him in a cardboard box.
My son did the research on his own and found out what to feed him. I also did some research to make sure we could keep him without doing too much harm. Ironically, while researching it, I encountered a video from another, well known hiver, @papa-pepper. I learned something too. In his video, he talked about how its feet were like treble hooks, having 3 little hook toes for each leg. At this point, I had already held it a couple of times and found out how hard it is to get them to let go. I hadn't realized that there were 3 hook on each leg. But anyway, let me get back on track.
Hercules Beetles are nocturnal. The first night of staying in my son's room, he could hear him moving around all night. The other thing about these Beetles is that they dig. So naturally, Vulcan began digging in his box. If you look closely at the top of the picture, you'll see where he began a hole in the shape of his body.
So the next day, we decided to upgrade his living arrangements. I went into the little forrest in my neighborhood and dug up some of the ground there. We put it in a little container with a stick for Vulcan to crawl on. Call me crazy, but he seemed happy to get something to dig into. We also put a piece of cardboard in there to kind of serve as a feeding tray and shelter.
One thing is certain, the little guy loves bananas. We fed him a chip of banana every night and he would start eating it pretty soon after we put it on there. By the next day, it was always gone. We put some strawberries in there a couple of days and he just pretty much pushed them around. I think they may have been too hard for him.
After a couple of weeks, my son and I decided to return him to the wild. The beetle stage is the last stage of a hercules beetle's life. They only live for about 6 months in this stage. So we figured we'd leave him some time to find a mate and make more hercules Beetles. So went back to the edge of the forrest and found a fallen tree to put him on. We left him with a piece of banana for his trouble.
About a week later, we found a female hercules beetle not far from where we released Vulcan. Notice the lack of horns. She was flipped on her back, so we helped her get back on her feet. Perhaps she met up with Vulcan and had a whirlwind romance. That's what I'd like to think anyway.
I hope you enjoyed reading about our temporary pet. Let me know what you think about it in the comments.
Cool name choice. Ever heard those things fly? Like someone threw a baby rattle and forgot to let go LOL! Cool pet and glad you let it live in hopes it would procreate!
The first night, we heard him try to fly. We'll, my son heard him, but I didn't. I didn't realize they could fly until I began researching it. It was a really cool experience and we both learned a lot.
Wow, Vulcan actually found a mate close by??? Aren't they pretty rare insects? I'm so glad you had him as a guest for a while, then let him go in a better place than he was when you found him! What do they eat in the wild?
Well, to be honest, I wouldn't be able to tell if they actually mated, but she was less than 50 yards/meters away from where we released him, so it is possible. They aren't that rare around here as we see them most summers. In fact, we found another one a couple of weeks before, but it was dead when we found it. They usually live in the forrest and eat dead and decaying trees or fallen fruit. We have some wild berries around here so I'm sure they eat that too.
It was a great experience and I'm glad to have been able to learn about the Hercules Beetle along with my son. Thanks for the comment!
It does seem very likely that they found each other! I imagine that they have some sort of pheromones for that?
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