Bess Beetles

A bess beetle, also known as a horned passalus beetle, is a member of the order Coleoptera, which basically is the fancy word for beetle. These beetles are all black, but when young but still past larvae, they are red. Bess beetles’ elytra (hard wing coverings) are fused together, which means that unlike most beetles, horned passalus beetles cannot fly. This attribute makes them great to play with: they can’t fly away! One distinctive aspect of them is their horn on the top of their head. It looks like a little mini version of the top horn of a triceratops! It is curved forward, and it is used for “bullying” its way through tight spaces, or pushing some rotting wood open. They are found exclusively in or near large rotting logs. The rotting wood is their only food! Their mandibles might look kind of scary, but they do no harm to humans. Even though they are never aggressive to humans (I hold my pet bess beetle nearly every day), they can sometimes be aggressive to other beetles, as shown when once one of my bess beetles grabbed onto the other one’s leg. When in pain, annoyed, angered, distressed, happy, or trying to communicate, they make squeaky noises. A way to tell what a noise means is to look at its mandibles. If the mandibles open wide like it wants to eat an elephant, that means it was a negative emotion. If the mandibles stay normal, it is either happy or communicative. Unlike nearly all other beetles, both parents care for their larvae! In most beetle species, neither parent does. That’s why once, I found two beetles tending to one fat larva.