One of the largest beetles
At more than sixteen centimetres, not counting its antennae, it is one of the biggest beetles on Earth.
The Amazon · Beetles
Titan beetle
Titanus giganteus
A huge, flat, dark brown beetle with long antennae and powerful jaws.
- Size
- Up to 16.5cm long
- Look for it
- January to April, then October to December
- Where
- Rainforest in the Amazon basin and the Guianas
Marches after you, jaws working. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Titan beetle
Good to know
Six things about the titan beetle
It can snap a pencil
Its jaws are strong enough to cut through a pencil, and can draw blood.
The adult never eats
The adult does not feed. It lives for a few weeks on what it stored as a grub.
Nobody has seen the grub
The grub has never been found. From the size of its tunnels in dead wood, it is thought to be as big as a sausage.
It hisses
If threatened it hisses, by forcing air out of the breathing holes in its sides.
Only the males fly
Males fly to lights at night in search of females. The females are hardly ever seen.
The real thing
Photos of the titan beetle
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Almost all sightings are of males that come to bright lights at the forest edge during the rainy season.
How to help
It needs dead wood in untouched rainforest. So little is known about it that protecting the forest is the only way to protect the beetle.
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