:: verypurpleperson ::

Warning: wriggly thing pictures ahead!

Colombian Hercules beetle larva, age: almost one year

This morning, the three of us woke up in excitement  because today was the soil change day for our larva! It can only be done every 3-4 months, so this occasion is something that we are always waiting for. It has been almost a year since we bought the larva, and today is the third soil change.

The larva is growing slower now, the size is just a little bit bigger than the last time (March 2010), but the body is  a lot firmer. It also moved a lot when I held it, and when I put him on Sidra’s hand, it bit Sidra’s hand! I took it from Sidra’s hand and it bit my palm too! The larva has a pair of little mandibles that are used for digging the soil. I guess he was trying to ‘dig’ on Sidra’s and my hand. It was just a little pinch though, no serious damage has done.

My husband still refused to touch the larva, he said that he couldn’t touch it because he was busy taking pictures. Owkay. But I know that deep down his [...]

You know, we actually have pet in the house, although I rarely talked about it. But we’ve almost never seen it around because it is living in a plastic box buried under a heap of soil. In fact, it hardly can be called a pet at all, because we can’t, you know, pet it or play with it. The only thing we can do is watching it while it’s growing.

Anyway, meet our pet: a Colombian Hercules beetle larva! Sidra calls it ‘Herakuresu’, which is simply how the word ‘Hercules’ said in Japanese. He’s crazy about all these kabuto (rhino beetle) and kuwagata (stag beetle), so my husband and I finally agreed to have one.

It was bought last August in a beetle store in Shibuya, the store owner said that the larva was *maybe* a male. He showed me how to differentiate the male from female by looking at some spot on its tiny belly. Although he said that there was a certain thing to see there, I have to admit that I couldn’t see anything. So I hope this larva would really turn out to be a male. Because male Hercules beetle will have this most impressive [...]