Carpet Beetle
I’ve posted carpet beetle larvae before, and I’ve been expecting to find an adult and post it someday soon, so I was a bit surprised at my own surprise to discover that last Thursday’s bug was actually a carpet beetle. Thank you everyone for helping with the ID; Susannah had the clincher by asking if the underside looked like this. Yes, I rather fancy it does.
I love how the legs and antennae seem to retract into slots when the bug is flipped over. I also notice the beetle scaling that we’ve seen before, that weird bumpy surfacing we seen on a shell at magnification. (Click the larger version to zoom in on the bumpies.)
I mentioned that I thought the bug from Thursday was a True Bug because I thought it had a beak. Take a gander at this photo and tell me I’m wrong:
Okay, don’t tell me I’m wrong. I already get that. 
It’s probably a side view of some mouthpart thingy. But what? Is it a mandible, or a pedipalp, or is it just some mouthpart thingy? Whatever it is, it looks lke it could go right into the bone.
tceisele said,
March 24, 2008 @ 12:02 pm
it looks lke it could go right into the bone.
Well, yeah, but isn’t he only 2-3 mm long? Wouldn’t the bone have to be less than about half a millimeter under the skin?
tceisele said,
March 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Oh, and don’t feel too bad about having a beetle that you thought was a true bug; I’ve got a picture I took last August (and just started trying to ID now) that turns out to be a true bug, but at the time I thought it was a beetle!
Susannah said,
March 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
About the legs disappearing into slots; I had noticed that. When the beetle is alive and more or less undisturbed, the legs flail madly. But put him on ice, and they disappear; the same happens if he is injured or dead.
I have been Googling images, looking for a close-up (closer) but haven’t found one yet.
David Brady said,
March 24, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
tceisele: That’s not the point! I mean, look at the SIZE of that thing. The fact that the size of that thing is perhaps only a few tenths of a millimeter is NOT the point!
Susannah: Interestingly, this one played dead when it was on its back. It held perfectly still, legs and antennae retracted, for at least 2 full minutes while I took photos. As an additional interesting bit, I figured it was playing dead because I had knocked it on its back and would continue playing dead if I flipped it back over, but no: as soon as I rolled it back over it stood up and began plodding along as if nothing had happened.
Susannah said,
March 28, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
I’ve put up a few more carpet beetle photos at Do beetles get hangovers?, and linked to your two cb posts.
I also got a great shot of the slots where they hide their legs, and deleted it by mistake. And by the time I realized that I’d deleted the wrong one, I’d cleaned out my Recycle bin. Oh, well. I’ll try again.
Carpet Beetle Adult said,
March 29, 2008 @ 3:59 am
[…] of carpet beetles appearing on people’s blogs: there’s also pretty recent pictures at Insect Picture of the Day, and Wanderin’ Weeta[3]. These are both a different species from what I have here, probably […]
Susannah said,
March 31, 2008 @ 4:11 am
There’s more discussion and photos of this in tonight’s blog post, here.
Dragoness said,
April 7, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
Oooooo! Dermestids! The nemesis of my bug collection! They’re probably munching away at my favorite wasps right now!