Bug of the Day

Two longhorned beetles in one night, at opposite ends of the spectrum. On the left, we have the teeny, tiny, Eupogonius tomentosus. No common name, and a really bad haircut ;-). On the right, we have the brown Prionid, Orthosoma brunneum, one of the biggest beetles you will ever see in my part of the world.

For scale, the Eupogonius is resting on a single "wave" of the shingle, while the brown Prionid takes up more than 13 of them (including its antennae).

@crochetlesbian submitted: This fella was next to my front door last week! I live on Cape Cod, MA. Google image search gave me Derobrachus geminatus but the impression I got was that those were rare? So I wabted to ask a person 🫣

Google image search is possibly the worst way to identify bugs because it doesn't take into account your location! And often location is the easiest way to distinguish two very similar-looking bugs from photos only. Derobrachus geminatus is not found at all in MA. If you're going to use an app, I'd use Seek instead.

Google was at least right about the type of beetle - this one is also a prionine longhorn, but more likely a brown prionid beetle, Orthosoma brunneum.

Hey Snipes, ya know the hell those are? These dudes annoyed me so much in July last year that I was staying home to avoid being punched in the face. Was it too late for June beetles, wasn't it?

Location helps with these (even if it's just narrowing it down to country) but I reckon it's some species of longhorn beetle, possibly subfamily Prioninae. My guess is Orthosoma brunneum, the brown prionid, but again this depends on your location. :]

Brown Prionid Beetle (Orthosoma brunneum)

a large and upset man! brown prionid beetle, Orthosoma brunneum. turn the sound on to hear him complaining

So I fell asleep in my living room last night and what I thought was my cat playing with my foot to wake me up, was actually this beetle the size of my thumb, crawling around on me. I had no idea what the fuck it was, so I looked online. It's called Orthosoma brunneum; Brown Prionid. These things are interesting actually, they're somewhat rare and are supposedly kinda new to CT, they don't eat when they're in they're adult stage and are completely harmless, they're only defense is the squeaky sound they make with they're back legs. They're whole point when they're adults is to find warm/humid spots to lay eggs in like trees and poles. Besides all that, there's not much info on them. All in all, I don't want to find any more in my house, I was nice to this one and let it go, but if I find more.. they're dead. #bug #bugs #beetles #beetle

Bug of the Day

Peek-a-boo!

(note to self: check shingles on shed for signs of warping :-))

@the-worm-man submitted: We found this guy on the window. We think it’s a Longhorn Beetle, but we did some research, and apparently they don’t live where we do? ([removed]) (please remove location) So I wanted to ask you- am I right, and should we be concerned?

Longhorn beetles are an entire family (Cerambycidae) with thousands of species found worldwide, so yes, you’re right about what it is, but no, you shouldn’t be concerned! This one looks like a brown prionid beetle, Orthosoma brunneum, which is native.