Bill the Beetle, aka Zeke the Greek
I thought I’d post about something new I discovered today when reading about the Darkling Beetle species Zophobas morio. These are beetles that some folks will know by the common name for their larval form, Superworms.
First off, the beetle I’ll be using as my representative here is named “Bill.” I discovered Bill one day in my bin of feeder roaches for my Bearded Dragon (Drago). When I first met Bill, he was a weird waxy, mummy-looking mutant lying motionless amongst the frass (roach poo) at the bottom of the plastic bin.
He almost got dumped into the trash, but I gently picked him out recognizing the wax museum-like form as the pupal stage of some sort of bug. It definitely was NOT a roach since roaches have hemimetabolous development. This means their intermediary stages or nymphs, basically look like mini replicas of their adult parents.
Bill didn’t stay red for very long and in fact, the next day he was pretty BLACK. While investigating a bit about the meaning of his scientific or Latin name, I couldn’t find much in the entomological references I checked. I delved a bit deeper and came up with this and thought you might find it interesting.
In Greek, Zophos refers to “black” or “black darkness of the nether world.” Mori refers to “death.”
I think I like the name Bill if he’s going to hang out on my kitchen counter, but maybe for Halloween he can be scary Zeke the Greek, herald of black death of the netherworld.
Bill is also going to be a family member for about as long as Drago. I’m not sure how my husband will feel about this. He asked me when I got Drago how long Bearded Dragons live. I said “about 15 years with good care.” Wow! That means we will be in our 60’s.
Drago was 3 when he came to live with us in March 2020, so if he lives to be 15, I will be the very old age of 68. Well, BILL can live for about the exact same amount of time! FIFTEEN years. That’s right! I read it here -https://sciencing.com/superworm-life-cycle-5347598.html
If you’re interested in a pet beetle like mine, here’s a link to a care sheet. They are easy to keep, low maintenance, and don’t bite! https://beta-static.fishersci.com/content/dam/fishersci/en_US/documents/programs/education/technical-documents/data-sheets/carolina-biological-darkling-beetle-data-sheet.pdf
Thanks for reading! 🐞🦋🐝🐛🐜🦗🦟
Bugging You From San Juan Island 