Green tiger beetle
Cicindela campestris
— Where the name comes from
Cicindela was the Latin name for the firefly, and Linnaeus moved it to this metallic green beetle for its lustre, not its light: it emits nothing, but reflects the sun like an emerald. Campestris names the place. The English name, tiger beetle, looks instead at the behaviour — and is the most exact of the three.
— Facts
- Group
- Insects · Insecta
- Order
- Beetles
- Habitat
- Sandy paths, open clearings, sunny heaths
- Range
- Europe and northern Asia
- Size
- 12–15 mm
- Diet
- Ants, spiders, caterpillars and any arthropod it can reach
- Lifespan
- 2–3 years, nearly all as a larva
— Characteristics
- 01
It runs at over two kilometres an hour, sixty body lengths a second.
- 02
The larva lives in a vertical shaft and seizes whatever passes above it.
- 03
Its mandibles cross in front of the head like two scythes.
— What sets it apart
It runs so fast that it goes blind. At top speed its eyes do not gather enough light to form a stable image, and the insect loses sight of its prey: so it chases in bursts, stopping an instant to refocus, then setting off again. A related Australian species has been measured at two and a half metres a second, which scaled to human size would be seven hundred kilometres an hour. The larva, by contrast, lives motionless: it digs a vertical shaft, plugs the entrance with its flat head and strikes backwards, with two hooks on its back that anchor it so that no prey can drag it out.
