The lobster-jawed stag beetle
On a wet wooden board with green vegetation blurring behind it, the beetle looked almost cheerful: a warm orange-yellow body, a pair of long curved mandibles edged with teeth, and strong front legs planted like a boxer’s. It might have been a fallen leaf at a glance, if leaves had jaws like that. The teeth along the mandibles ran in a neat row, like the edge of a saw, and it held its position as I crouched, indifferent to the camera.
This is Prosopocoilus astacoides kachinensis, a stag beetle of the family Lucanidae, order Coleoptera. The species name astacoides means like a crayfish, a reference to the toothed, curved mandibles that resemble the claws of a small crayfish, and the subspecies name kachinensis points to the Kachin region of northern Myanmar, whose mountain forests continue into the hills around Medog. The genus Prosopocoilus is spread widely across Asia, and its members are often warmly coloured, from chestnut to amber, which makes them favourites in collections.
This group of stag beetles is a favourite among keepers in Asia, where the larvae are raised in decaying wood for a year or two before the adults finally crawl out. The males’ jaws, impressive as they look, are wrestling tools used against rival males rather than weapons against anything else; the teeth are for gripping another male’s jaws during a shoving match. A well-grown male can be one of the most photogenic creatures in a wet forest, and this one did not disappoint.
For a few minutes that orange beetle was the brightest thing on the wet board, a tiny crayfish impersonator in the middle of a monsoon forest.
