EVERYTHING’S CLICKIN'
If you have to spend your youth as a wireworm, it’s only fair you get to be something terrific when you finally morph. Wireworms are not cuddly, not beautiful, not clever. In fact they are pests that take out the roots of crops and think pesticides are delicious. They are not popular. But when wireworms go through metamorphosis, they get to be the cool dudes. The athletes. They become the amazing click beetle.
I was sitting on the deck reading when I noticed a beetle who looked like a cartoon character––black, long and oval with two big white “eyes”––spots designed to look like scary eyes. Suddenly he popped into the air and flipped over. Then he did it again. Turns out this is how these little fellows escape their enemies. Or, if they get stuck on their backs, they can flip back over. Why haven’t turtles thought of that?
Click beetles arch their backs by bending at a hinge, then snap back. There is a spiny projection tucked against the underside of the bug and this sudden arching snaps the projection down, kind of like snapping down the legs on your ironing board. Then the projection continues around and is tucked into a groove on their underside of the next segment. All of this happens very quickly; it makes a loud click and launches the beetle into the air. This is no minor feat; they are popping up 10 or 12 times their own height.
Man, I wish I could do that. Imagine if you were in a boring conversation at a party, and pop––you could flip up and away from the perpetrator of all things mundane and land across the room by the spinach dip. I'm just not sure I want a spiny projection in my thorax.
To see click beetles in action:
