A Tiger or a Beetle?
- Joshua Venturo
- Jun 6
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 9
Great Sand Dunes Tiger Beetle
Fascinating, strange, exotic bugs. Australian deserts are alive with them. Amazon jungles crawl with them. Yet, how many of these bugs are really exotic? How many crazy insects can be found in your backyard? Today, we will discover one small but fascinating North American beetle: the tiger beetle. So get ready for a close look into our amazing God’s amazing creation!
The tiger beetle is not called a “tiger” for nothing. Tiger beetles have a unique and ferocious way to capture prey.
Step 1: Locating prey and calculating distance
The first step is for a tiger beetle to find prey. Tiger beetles usually hunt in the daytime and prefer sandy, flat areas. This makes spotting ants and grasshoppers easy.
Once prey has been sighted, the tiger beetle calculates the distance to the prey. It does this by looking for the elevation of prey in its field of vision. The higher prey appears from the beetles point of view, the farther it is.
Step 2: The dash
Once the beetle knows where to go, it is ready to capture its prey. The tiger beetle races up to 5.6 miles per hour toward the insect it is trying to catch. That might not seem so fast when you’re in your car, but if the beetle were the same size as a human, it would be running at 217 mph! That’s 125 of the beetle’s body lengths per second!
Since the beetle cannot see very well at this speed, it sometimes must repeat step one to get back in the right direction.
Step 3: A tiger beetle’s meal
Warning!! Not for the faint-hearted! If you have trouble with how predators eat, or are especially compassionate of ants, please skip this step!
Once the tiger beetle reaches its prey, it is time to make a catch! The beetle grabs the prey and spits digestive juices onto it. This starts to liquify the prey and digest it outside of the tiger beetle! Then, the beetle chews its prey with large mandibles. The beetle’s mandibles are like two sharp blades with smaller spines branching off them. A tiger beetle’s prey doesn’t stand a chance!
Tiger beetle larvae are ferocious predators too
Tiger beetle larvae also are formidable enemies. A tiger beetle larva looks like an S-shaped grub. It builds a tunnel and waits for prey. When an ant happens by, it lunges out, grabs the ant, and returns to its tunnel to consume the prey. Small hooks and bumps keep the larva inside its tunnel as it struggles with prey.
Predators or prey?
But tiger beetles are not only predators. If any tiger beetle is out at night, there is danger of bats. Bats use ultrasonic sounds to find prey. However, tiger beetles have a defense. They use their elytra, covers on their wings, to create ultrasonic clicks to mimic the sounds a certain kind of disgusting moth makes. These sounds trick the bats into thinking that the tiger beetle is a bad-tasting moth! Scientists are still looking into this interesting hypothesis.
From predator to prey, tiger beetles point to the incredible design of the Creator!
Interesting Facts
There are 2,600 known species and subspecies of tiger beetles!
There are 8.2 billion people in the world as of 2025! Each of these people needs to hear the Gospel (Matthew 28:19-20). If you are born again, it is your job to tell the good news that Jesus died instead of us, taking the punishment of all our sins against God, was buried, and rose again into Heaven (Romans 5:8, 6:23; John 3:16)!
Photo by Jenny Venturo
Information from: https://www.minibeastwildlife.com.au/resources/tiger-beetles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_beetle
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0610
https://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=IICOL02298
