Like many bug species, the white beach tiger beetle is easy to overlook for most people. They’re remarkably fast and can dart across the sand so swiftly you’ll lose them in the blink of an eye. As you can imagine they’re very difficult to photograph (and even harder to film- I’ll post evidence of my attempts later) so I’m quite pleased I finally got some good photos of this species.
These beetles are even easier to overlook when they start life in their larval state, tiny and worm-like. Despite their unremarkable appearance, beach tiger beetle larvae do something that almost no other animals do. Like lots of incredible phenomena in the world of science it was discovered entirely by accident!
A graduate student was taking some time off from her studies with a trip to the beach on Cumberland island in Georgia, USA. After she returned from her vacation she was excitedly telling her advisor the neat things she’d seen at the beach, including the Tiger Beetle larvae rolling down the beach. Her advisor was confused… beetle larvae “rolling”? These larvae were known to hide in tiny tunnels along the beach but their behavior was considered to be almost entirely sedentary; the advisor was baffled by his student’s descriptions of what she’d seen. There was only one thing to do- they went back to the beach.
Intensive study of tiger beetle larvae on that beach confirmed what the student had seen. In order to escape predators, a tiger beetle larva could be observed leaping upwards into the wind, curling into a circle, and catching a draft to literally roll like a hula hoop down the beach at high speed. This movement (where the animal rolls forward along a central axis) is called wheel locomotion and true examples of it are amazingly rare in the animal kingdom.
Here’s a Video that discusses this discovery and includes footage of the leaping larvae in action.
Whenever I see tiger beetles on the beach I think of this story and am reminded to embrace my curiosity in every way I can! Noticing the things that other people overlook can become a superpower if you let it.
