IMAGINE carrying almost a fifth of your body weight on your head – or, more accurately, in your massively elongated jaws. That’s how it feels to be an adult male stag beetle. The two pictured here were spotted in Germany, brawling on an oak tree branch.
Their jaws are mighty, but they are cumbersome as well as useless for eating (and not much better for biting or cutting). The adults’ only sustenance is tree sap, rotting fruit and water, which they lap with their furry orange tongue.
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Natural selection would work against these males if it weren’t for the advantage their jaws bring. Like the antlers of their namesake deer, male stag beetles’ jaws are used for rutting: wrestling with other males over access to females.
This species, Lucanus cervus, is the archetypal European stag beetle, and it lives for only a few months in adult form. Both males and females spend six years underground as larvae, surviving only on decomposing wood, before pupating into adults.
In May and June, they emerge into the daylight. This is when females must find a suitable site – another bit of rotten wood – to lay their eggs. Males, meanwhile, must find a partner and mate… and that means more fighting.
Photographer
Solvin Zankl
This article appeared in print under the headline “Fight, fight, fight”
