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ellerExtra for sabotabby, who was interested in what exactly is understood as a "maybug" where I live. Not very good photos because I didn't have my good camera with me (and I was more interested in drawing, anyway), so, no photography award for me, but, uh, the beetle is recognizable from the pictures.
As you can see, it's a very efficient destroyer of leaves. Also, because it's so large (this one was something like 3cm), you can hear it munch if you get close enough. (Getting close is very easy: these animals are feeding machines without anything like a flight instinct.) Fun fact: my parents told me that, when they were young, kids used to keep these bugs as pets: maybugs don't mind being picked up and put into a cigar box (they like the dark!) as long as you regularly throw fresh leaves in with them...
Another fun fact: their larvae live underground. They're also very noisy. (Which seems stupid and pointless, but, there you go: maybugs are simply not very smart.) That is, you can't quite hear them, and also not quite feel the ground vibrate, but... Something in-between. Wow, this is really difficult to describe! Anyway: if you're under a tree or shrub with a heavy maybug infestation, and you take your shoes off, you can sense it, somehow.
sabotabby, who was interested in what exactly is understood as a "maybug" where I live. Not very good photos because I didn't have my good camera with me (and I was more interested in drawing, anyway), so, no photography award for me, but, uh, the beetle is recognizable from the pictures.As you can see, it's a very efficient destroyer of leaves. Also, because it's so large (this one was something like 3cm), you can hear it munch if you get close enough. (Getting close is very easy: these animals are feeding machines without anything like a flight instinct.) Fun fact: my parents told me that, when they were young, kids used to keep these bugs as pets: maybugs don't mind being picked up and put into a cigar box (they like the dark!) as long as you regularly throw fresh leaves in with them...
Another fun fact: their larvae live underground. They're also very noisy. (Which seems stupid and pointless, but, there you go: maybugs are simply not very smart.) That is, you can't quite hear them, and also not quite feel the ground vibrate, but... Something in-between. Wow, this is really difficult to describe! Anyway: if you're under a tree or shrub with a heavy maybug infestation, and you take your shoes off, you can sense it, somehow.
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Date: 2022-05-17 12:20 pm (UTC)Wikipedia tells me maybeetles were also eaten in France and Germany:
In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[7] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants.
What say you? What to give it a try? I don't know if I can find them in Lebanon. :P
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