Cockchafer
May. 8th, 2011 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philmophlegmSumatra caught a cockchafer the other day and brought it into the utility room. Makes a nice change from Kjetil's decapitated rabbits.
'Cockchafer' isn't quite as rude as it sounds. It is apparently also known as a 'may bug', a 'billy witch' or a 'spang beetle'. It's a beetle in other words, but a really big one with big orange antennae.
I could swear that the person who wrote the wikipedia entry is playing up to the rude name though:
"The two species can best be distinguished by the form of their pygidium (the back end): it is long and slender in the common cockchafer, but shorter and knob-shaped at the end in the forest cockchafer."
'Cockchafer' isn't quite as rude as it sounds. It is apparently also known as a 'may bug', a 'billy witch' or a 'spang beetle'. It's a beetle in other words, but a really big one with big orange antennae.
I could swear that the person who wrote the wikipedia entry is playing up to the rude name though:
"The two species can best be distinguished by the form of their pygidium (the back end): it is long and slender in the common cockchafer, but shorter and knob-shaped at the end in the forest cockchafer."
