14 Elephant Beetle
Contrary to belief, the elephant beetle cannot in fact take down an entire elephant. Even though they range between 2.8-4.7 inches in size, their diet mainly consists of the sap of specific trees and fallen ripened fruit such as pineapples. They also ingest longan, lychee fruit and bark from certain trees such as poinciana which is native to various islands in the Caribbean and the continent of South America.
They’re commonly found in places such as Mexico and Venezuela because they live in rainforests and are able to maintain high body temperatures at night when the temperature decreases.
One of the most interesting bits of info about the elephant beetle is that they’re black in colour and are covered by a coat of microscopic hairs. The fine hairs grow particularly thick on their hardened fore-wing and it’s why their bodies give off a yellow-ish colour that makes them almost unrecognizable in their habitat.
Believe it or not, researchers at the University of California – Berkeley actually took advantage of that trait by conducting a military project where they implanted electrodes into the beetle’s pupa to gain remote control of their flying behaviour.
