Carrion beetle, Silpha sp.

[Wade]

Found these on a dead squirrel. Thanks to Lindsey Pyne for taking the pictures!

The first is an adult, the second a larvae. I'm feeding them thawed pinkies and fuzzies

Wade

 

[OldHag]

THOSE ARE COOL!!!!! If you get a good colony of them going Ill buy some from you!!! I love watching my dermestids but dang, these are just COOL lookin!!

Michelle

 

[Wade]

Yes, they are pretty cool aren't they ?

They will eat things like dry dog food, but to get them to reproduce you apparently need some type of meat. Unfortunately, dried meat won't work as it will for the dermestids. So far, though, pinks and fuzzies seem to work pretty well and are too small to really stink up the place!

Wade

 

[OldHag]

Well, I have a freezer full of Hoppers and pinkies. SOOOO if you do get enough I got my pennies saved up!!

Michelle

 

[Wade]

Well, I think they are reproducing. Although I did collect a few larvae when I collected the adults, there seems to be more now. I'll have to see how they do. Right now they're actually sharing a terrerium with superworms!

Wade

 

[Elytra and Antenna]

Hi Wade,
They'll lay relatively huge white eggs (3mm) about 1/4 below ground within a few inches of the meat. The substrate should be damp. Adults can produce hundreds of eggs in months. Eggs are pretty tough if you dig them up, but of course they can smash. They are really fast growing, I think they hatch in 1 day and go through 2 molts to mature in a week (I wrote it down in a journal years ago). Growing the larvae is easy using dog food or hamburger. The only tough part is the mature (L3 like stags & rhinos) need a good place to make pupal cells, but they aren't good at burying. Try a coarse peat or coco fiber mix though you may find something better.(Superworms - mealworms with hormones or Zophobas morio?). Any type of mealworm, especially Z.m., will eat the pupae if it can get at them. S.americana is certainly a cool one. The carrion beetle I'd like to find (I used to see them on rotten watermelons a long long time ago) looks more like a burying beetle. You could photograph the eggs, larval stages and pupa if you get a chance --for an article, not here of course '-)

 

[OldHag]

Wade....what on earth is your avatar?? They look like those grubs ppl in South America fry up and eat!!...sorry to get off topic but I gotta know.

 

[Wade]

Orin-

The superworms are the Zophobas ones. I have a sort of woodland terrarium going with them, as I like them almost as much as captives as I like them as feeders! The Silpha were kind of a whim when I found them, so I really need to start a seperate container for them. The substrate I'm using is a mix of peat, sand, bess beetle frass, rotten wood, whatever I had on hand. I'll probably do something simmilar when I set the Silpha up on their own. I wanted to do that anyway, so I can better track growth, etc.

Michelle-

They are eastern Hercules beetle (Dynastes tityus) grubs that I raise. They are awsome animals, both as larvae and adults!

Wade

 

[sanenightmare]

i was told in the chat that i should ask wade...that he would know....i used to have a giant colony of deremstid beetles...and i miss them dearly...and am going to get another one started.....but is it ok to use them as food for the tarantula's as well?

 

[Wade]

Dermestids are a bit different from carrion beetles, although some think they may be closely related. I don't deliberately keep dermestids, but I have a fairly massive infestation of them as they have colonozied all my cockroach bins and many of my reptile cages. I have used the larvae as feeders on occasion, although the bristliness of them seems to repel some tarantulas. If a spider will accept them, I think there's no harm. Picky spiders don't seem very keen though.

Wade