urbpan | Entries tagged with dermestid beetles

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This hairy beast is just a baby. If it makes it to fully grown--and why wouldn't it, it has few predators and is well defended with prickly setae--it will metamorphose into a short blackish beetle with a tawny belt across its back. Both as an adult beetle and as an active larva, the larder beetle Dermestes lardarius* feeds on durable organic matter. This individual was found with many close relatives feeding on the mummy of long-dead mouse. Unlike the relative (Anthrenus verbasci) I covered earlier, larder beetles are almost always encountered indoors, the environment which provides shelter and food to them around the globe.

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Aw look at the fuzzy little belly!

* "Skin eater in the larder"

Current Music: Jonathan Coulton - Creepy Doll

This is another time where I wasn't sure what I was looking at until I examined the photo later. Another little beetle only 3 mm long or so, and delightfully colorful. What a disappointment to realize it's not only non-native, but moonlights as a household pest.

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Anthrenus verbasci* is also known as the varied carpet beetle (or more correctly, if awkwardly "variegated carpet beetle). Carpet beetles are a group of beetles that specialize on the dry durable tissues of the long dead. A wool carpet is just a big mat of mammal fur, a priceless taxidermy is a tempting balloon of edible skin, a beautiful set of mounted butterflies is a carpet beetle buffet. This species has a taste for plant tissues as well, becoming a pest in flour mills and food storage facilities.

* This name translates to "mullein wasp."