Cockchafer
The cockchafer is a big, chunky beetle with reddish-brown wing cases and a dark head. Its antennae end in little fans that look like tiny leaves. It flies around trees in spring, buzzing loudly.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Cockchafer compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A boy cockchafer has seven little leaf flaps on each antenna, and a girl has six.
Its baby is a fat white grub curled up like the letter C. It lives under the ground for three or four years.
Boys find the girls by smelling the leaves that the girls are munching.
It usually does not fly more than 2 or 3 kilometres from the place where it came out of the ground.
Many animals love to eat cockchafers, because they are big and full of goodness.
Most asked questions about Cockchafer
?Do cockchafers bite?
No. A cockchafer cannot hurt you, it just holds on with its little claws.
?What do cockchafers eat?
The beetles eat leaves and the grubs in the soil eat plant roots.
?How big is a cockchafer?
It is about 25 to 30 millimetres long, about as long as the top part of your thumb.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melolontha melolontha
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Scarabaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Maybug, Maybeetle, Doodlebug
Where the facts come from
- Cockchafer (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 Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium. CC BY 2.0, 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.
Stag beetle
Hercules beetle
Common glow-worm
Goliath beetle
Mealworm beetle
Japanese beetle
Marmalade hoverfly
European corn borer
Red mason bee
Yellow dung fly
Squash bug
Tomato leafminer_%E2%99%80,_Parc_de_Woluw%C3%A9,_Bruxelles_(51222810874).jpg){kind=link}