Mealworm beetle
The mealworm beetle is a dark brown or black beetle. Its babies are the famous mealworms: long, yellowish, wiggly larvae. People feed mealworms to pet lizards and birds, and some people even eat them.
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Fun facts
A mealworm changes its skin many times as it grows, often 15 to 17 times.
Mealworm babies are white at first and slowly turn brown.
After the last skin change it becomes a pale pupa, and then a beetle comes out.
A mother beetle lays about 500 eggs in her life, which lasts about 6 to 12 months.
Mealworms were already living with people in the Bronze Age, thousands of years ago.
Most asked questions about Mealworm beetle
?Is a mealworm a worm?
No. A mealworm is the baby of the mealworm beetle. It only looks a little like a worm.
?What do mealworms turn into?
They turn into a pupa and then into a dark brown or black beetle.
?How big is a mealworm beetle?
The beetle is about 12 to 19 millimetres long. The mealworm can grow to about 3 centimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Tenebrio molitor
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Tenebrionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Tenebrionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
- Also known as
- Yellow mealworm beetle
Where the facts come from
- Mealworm (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 Udo Schmidt from Deutschland. CC BY-SA 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.
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