Richard Jones - Extreme Insects

The caterpillar does not always look so deformed. When it first emerges from its egg it resembles an ant, complete with long, skinny waist and round, bulbous abdomen. It can also exude formic acid, the same sharp-tasting chemical used by ants to dissuade birds from eating them. Incidentally, the word ‘lobster’, traced back through the Old English ‘lopustre’ and Anglo-Saxon ‘loppestre’ or ‘lopystr’, comes from a corruption of the Latin ‘locusta’ – perhaps an even uglier beast if its habits are taken into account.

The most obvious purpose of jaws is eating. But this is really a secondary use, because plenty of insects eat without the aid of jaws. There is an even more basic function – biting. An insect may bite to catch and kill prey, to manipulate soil or cut leaf particles, or to chew a burrow into wood. Each of these behaviours requires its own type of jaws. And the insect with the most remarkable jaws uses them for a most remarkable behaviour.

Grant’s stag beetle, Chiasognathus granti , is sometimes also called Darwin’s stag beetle because he pondered on it in his famous book The Descent of Man

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