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A40 t1_jcw6ofq wrote

That's because they spontaneously generate as adults from leaf mould. Like voles do.

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tempus_periit t1_jcw73jj wrote

Oh, no. I can only imagine where they will eventually find them.

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ali3n33 t1_jcwdm55 wrote

As in never found in the wild? Can they be bred in captivity ? I googled and thought I found larvae pictures but the results are conflicting.

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Tairo t1_jcwih55 wrote

Yeah, I found one. Actually I found a bunch but I'm not gonna share them. I'm going to eat them all.

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Soyoulikedonutseh t1_jcwsf21 wrote

This in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no larva, and that titan beetles just spring out of holes in the ground!

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flaminate_strutching t1_jcwv6j4 wrote

“Boreholes thought to be created by titan beetle larvae seem to fit a grub over two inches wide and perhaps as much as one foot long.”

Holy crap!

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Darqnyz t1_jcwxoyi wrote

Probably because it's an insect we already "classified" as something else, and we haven't done enough research to link them

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Gecko99 OP t1_jcx7bwu wrote

Replying to Tairo (#2,276,019)

There could be some group of native people who have been occasionally finding two-inch-wide grubs for thousands of years and think they got really lucky and they just cook it on a stick over a fire. Maybe no one has thought to ask the right person what the biggest grub they've found was.

Two species of extant coelacanth have been discovered at fish markets, one in 1938, the other in 1997.

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DoppledBramble3725 t1_jcxdhyc wrote

Note to self, do not go to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, the Guianas, and north-central Brazil

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AUkion1000 t1_jcxfgqb wrote

Why not force a male snd female to produce eggs and go from there

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Hello-There-GKenobi t1_jcxzfj8 wrote

Replying to Gecko99 (#2,277,427)

You know those horseshoe crabs that scientists find really precious and would pay a lot to milk them?

Yeah, I walked past a village several years ago where there were a ton of them there were being sold to be cooked/eaten…. But nobody actually buys them to eat, too difficult to eat I hear, so they’re just left to die and rot. A by-product of fishing.

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yesemel t1_jcy9g3f wrote

Someone decipher and fix this sentence on the wiki: “The size of the size sensory integration were larger complex eyes that have structured large optic and antennal lobes”

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npeggsy t1_jcyfapw wrote

Replying to flaminate_strutching (#2,276,822)

We've been to the moon. We've been to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (well, James Cameron has). We've pretty much mapped almost the entire landmass of the earth with Google Maps. And yet we've never seen a grub that's a foot long, and there's a bunch of them out there. I love the earth.

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Pingaring t1_jcyww6p wrote

Conservatives: "Look what Jesus did!"

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thesneakywalrus t1_jcz52c5 wrote

Replying to AUkion1000 (#2,277,770)

It's very possible we've not had success breeding them in captivity.

There's a number of species that we've either struggled to, or outright haven't been able to breed.

Squids, for example, were previously thought to be impossible to breed in captivity because they are very difficult to keep alive and healthy in standard aquariums. Once we figured out that we needed HUGE tanks with opaque walls in order to keep them alive, we began to see success in breeding.

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newmilwaukee t1_jcza5qj wrote

Don't we have these in captivity and can't we just watch and see ?

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OnlyKilgannon t1_jczu21c wrote

Replying to npeggsy (#2,279,779)

I have been to the Great Wall of China. I have seen the Pyramids of Egypt. I've even witnessed a grown man satisfy a camel. But never in all my years as a sportscaster have I witnessed something as improbable, as impossible, as what we've witnessed here.

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NocentBystander t1_jczzb1h wrote

No one has found a larva of the titan beetle and survived you mean.

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Conocoryphe t1_jd2lxo2 wrote

Replying to AUkion1000 (#2,277,770)

They belong to the family Prioninae, which are notoriously difficult to breed, as these insects require very specific conditions that are often hard to replicate in a terrarium.

It would probably have been done by now by hobbyist beetle keepers, if you could just buy them from an online store without any trouble. But they are illegal to buy or own in many countries. You could theoretically travel to the South American forests to find male and female beetles, but the female titan beetles are also really elusive and may take a lot of time and effort to find. Especially since we're rapidly destroying their habitat.

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Conocoryphe t1_jd2mlix wrote

Being a biologist myself, Titanus giganteus is definitely on my bucket list of species that I'd love to see at least once in my life! (They also get bonus points for having one of the coolest Latin names out there, on par with Dynastes satanas, Attacus atlas and Varroa destructor).

These beetles belong to the family Prioninae, which are notoriously difficult to breed, as these insects require very specific conditions that are often hard to replicate in a terrarium. That's why they haven't been bred in captivity.

It would probably have been done by now by hobbyist beetle keepers, if you could just buy them from an online store without any trouble. But they are illegal to buy or own in many countries.

You could theoretically travel to the South American forests to find male and female beetles, but the female titan beetles are really elusive and may take a lot of time and effort to find, and not many people are willing to commit to such an expedition, because knowing what the larvae of these insects look like isn't exactly a scientific priority.

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