Is Your Beetle a Pet or a Pest? What Does It Eat and How to Identify It?

[Fervent Freyja]

TL;DR Summary

Insect identification

Need help identifying this beetle I found a few days ago. I gave it to my nephew today as a pet, but my sister wants to kill it (she think’s that it’s a dung beetle). Also need to know what he needs to be feeding it! I threw in some tomato/lettuce, sticks and plants, but not sure what it needs!

It’s about 3” long. It didn’t move and hid under a leaf the first day I had it- I was pretty sure it was going to die. But last night it was making LOUD thumping noises and slamming itself so hard into the lid that it was shaking the container! This was as close as a shot as I was comfortable getting

Does this look familiar to anyone?

 

[BillTre]

Yeah, looks like a beetle, (however, there are a lot of them).

I tried a google image search, but it didn't find any good matches because the front of the head was lacking.
Pictures of that would help.
Scale would be good (picture with a ruler).
Also, where found (area of country), kind of environment (niche) would be useful in narrowing down to what it is.

It does not look like a dung beetle to me (just saw a documentary on them). They seem chunkier to me.

There are often regional guides to insects in an area.
Extension services might have these, but searches should be able to find them.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm no entomologist, but it would probably be useful to know at least the rough geograhical area it was found in.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It will also help to give the tarsal formula (it's on Wikipedia if you need to look it up) for the beetle.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

I'm no entomologist, but it would probably be useful to know at least the rough geograhical area it was found in.

Oh, the geographical area is southeastern US, but since it was found in an aerospace facility and the guys that tried to scare me with it work on the floor, I only assumed it could have come from overseas/nationwide too. I don't really know exactly where they found it, but was thinking it likely come from a shipment seeing how it was almost dead or in some kind of diapause state?

i don’t know, it says the tarsal formula for beetles is usually 5-5-5.

Pictures of that would help.
Scale would be good (picture with a ruler).

I’ll see if he can get some better pictures!

Thanks!

 

[BillTre]

Oh, the geographical area is southeastern US, but since it was found in an aerospace facility and the guys that tried to scare me with it work on the floor, I only assumed it could have come from overseas/nationwide too. I don't really know exactly where they found it, but was thinking it likely come from a shipment seeing how it was almost dead or in some kind of diapause state?

I would look to local fauna first since they are the most likely suspects.
You wold be surprised how many different kinds of insects are around you that you probably completely unaware of.

Pictures.
Beetles (and kin) of the Southeastern US. Report your beetle here.
North American Beetles (ID guide).

 

[Fervent Freyja]

I would look to local fauna first since they are the most likely suspects.
You wold be surprised how many different kinds of insects are around you that you probably completely unaware of.

You were right, it’s native! They found out it’s an eastern Hercules beetle. Thanks!