I found this little guy in with some crickets I bought. I think it's a beetle, I was hoping someone could identify the species? It's about a 1/4" big, I put it in a sling vial with some wheat bran for now. Thanks for any help!
Yeah, most likely a dermestid beetle of some variety. A lot of commercial live food breeders raise them inside their cricket and roach colonies to eat the excess dead insects so that they don't have to clean it out as often. I found a larva of one inside a B. lateralis colony that I was sold. They're harmless though.
@Sarkhan42 thanks! So I should give it a piece of dead feeder every couple days? How often do they eat? I assume it won't get any bigger than 1/4" right?
Yeah more or less. I can't say I know anything about how much adults eat. I know if it were a larva, it would eat forever, but I'm not sure. And no it wont get any bigger.
I'm also not sure about life span. I'm sure there's some info online though.
My local pet shop gets at least 3 or 4 larva of them with each one of their cricket shipments, they just started giving me the larva for free which I occasionally feed off to slings.
@Sarkhan42 I think I've seen these before too in our yard and couldn't ID it. Thanks for the info. If I find another, might try and keep it. They sound pretty cool!
@WildSpider It's important to note that there are thousands if not tens of thousands of beetles in several different genera that all look very similar. You may need to do some in depth research on anything you catch in the wild in your area to know its needs.
@Beedrill Agreed. If I find another, I'll probably try to make sure it is in this genus first. Like you said, it might not be...but at least it's a possibility.
@Beedrill Oh, that's interesting. Do you know anyone that keeps them? Do you know if they enjoy keeping them or find them useful for the purposes you mentioned earlier?
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