Goliath beetle
Goliathus goliatus
— Where the name comes from
The name is repeated twice, genus and species, and both times it is Goliath: the Philistine giant felled by David with a sling. A binomial like that describes nothing about the animal — not the colour, not the habit, not the place — and says only that whoever first saw it thought one thing, which was that it was enormous. Among insects size is the trait that startles most, and it is rare for a name to admit it so openly.
— Facts
- Group
- Insects · Insecta
- Order
- Beetles
- Habitat
- Primary rainforest, in the canopy
- Range
- Equatorial Africa, from Cameroon to the Congo basin
- Size
- 6–11 cm; up to 100 g as a larva
- Diet
- Sap and ripe fruit as an adult; rotting wood as a larva
- Lifespan
- About a year, of which a few months as an adult
— Characteristics
- 01
It is among the heaviest insects in the world at the larval stage.
- 02
The male has a Y-shaped head, used as a lever in duels on branches.
- 03
It flies despite its weight, with a boom audible at a distance.
— What sets it apart
Its weight record belongs not to the adult but to the larva: before pupating it reaches a hundred grams, more than a sparrow, and to sustain that it must find decaying wood rich in nitrogen — the bottleneck of its life, so much so that in captivity it needs a supplementary protein diet. The male fights for females at the cracks in trees where sap runs: he wedges his forked head beneath his opponent and lifts him bodily off the branch, without ever wounding him. Whoever falls has lost.
