Boll weevil
The boll weevil is a small grey beetle with a very long snout. It is smaller than a grain of rice stood on end, but it is famous for causing huge trouble on cotton farms. It came from Mexico and spread across America.
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Fun facts
A mother lays up to 200 eggs, each one tucked inside a cotton bud.
In summer it takes only about three weeks to grow from an egg into an adult beetle.
It crossed from Mexico into Texas in 1892 and in about 30 years reached every cotton area in the United States.
Fire ants, spiders, birds and a tiny wasp all help by eating boll weevils.
It has cost American cotton farmers about 13 billion dollars.
Most asked questions about Boll weevil
?What does the boll weevil eat?
Cotton buds, flowers and young cotton fruits, called bolls.
?How big is a boll weevil?
Usually less than 6 millimetres long, about the size of a small grain of rice.
?Is the boll weevil dangerous?
Not to people, but it is the worst cotton pest in North America.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Anthonomus grandis
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Curculionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Curculionidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Boll weevil (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Agricultural Research Service , United States Department of Agriculture .. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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