One Impressive Beetle
We saw this creature as we were leaving an Ace hardware store. He looked pretty menacing and he didn’t seem to happy at all. He eventually flew away, but I had time to snap a few shots with my pocket camera.
It is a Long Jawed Longhorn Beetle, Trachyderes mandibularis, sometimes called horse-bean longhorn beetle. You can find them from southern California east to southern Texas, south to the Yucatan Peninsula in the east and Baja California in the west, with an outlying population in the lower Florida Keys.
The well developed mandibles indicates that this is a male. Males eat and defend saguaro fruits from each other, and use those huge mandibles for that purpose. The females don’t have the giant mandibles.
To see more photos and info go to http://bugguide.net/node/view/42430 Also see http://www.texasento.net/mandibularis.htm
