Very often on the street, especially in the evenings, we meet a beetle with a long mustache. In this case, the insect is quite fast, so you do not always have time to catch its appearance and consider it whole and in all details. The reason for its speed is understandable: sometimes procrastination can cost an insect life, so he tries to hide as soon as possible from the place of detection by a person. However, this black beetle with a long mustache is very beautiful, so many fans would like to know its name and get as much information as possible about it. Well, we satisfy our curiosity and tell all about these insects.
Surely each of you at least once in your life heard of the so-called "barbel" or "lumberjack". I must say that the family is perhaps the largest (according to preliminary estimates of about 26 thousand species) in the world of insects, therefore it lives on almost any continent. Unless in Antarctica. These rather small insects have become known and popular precisely because of their segmented mustache, which can exceed the length of their own body several times (usually 2-3 times).
It should be noted that a beetle with a long mustache or, in other words, a barbel is an insect that still continues to amaze scientists. Almost every year, experts from one or another continent find new species. Another feature of barbel, which is also not fully understood by scientists, is the appearance time. Some claim that the beetle with a long mustache appeared a very long time ago, and by today it has only evolved. Others insist that the species itself is new and recently discovered, so it could not live for several million years before us. One can only guess and wait for new discoveries that can tell us about such an amazing insect as a bug with a very long mustache.
As already mentioned above, barbel lives on almost every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. Thus, many species are present in Russia, Canada, Brazil and Europe. It is worth noting the fact that barbel is best in equatorial, subtropical and tropical zones, so their maximum number falls precisely on Brazil, that is, South America.
Males differ from females by the length of their antennae, as well as by their jaws. In males, usually the jaws are slightly extended forward and more square in shape, while the females have a rounded nose, jaws and smaller antennae. The beetle with a long mustache feeds mainly on the bark of trees. This is not to say that they harm the flora too much, because they spend a lot of time being below and picking up leaves, larvae and various other bugs and spiders of a smaller size.
The “communication” of barbel is also considered original, which in case of danger makes some hoarse-sniffing sounds. If we draw an analogy, then such a sound can only be compared with a piece of rusted metal, through which a no less rusty nail is drawn. Moreover, the sound is reproduced at a sufficiently low frequency that the human ear can hear.
