A five-horned beetle with nowhere to hide
Some beetles you photograph out of duty. This one I photographed out of awe. It turned up in Medog, Tibet, on 7 August 2024, a glossy, armoured giant with no shortage of horns and no apparent interest in being subtle about it. There was no mistaking it for anything else, and there was no hurrying the photograph either.
This is Eupatorus hardwickii, often written hardwickei, the five-horned rhinoceros beetle, a member of the scarab family Scarabaeidae (order Coleoptera). The males carry five horns in total: one long one on the head and two pairs on the thorax, a design distinctive enough that the beetle is recognisable at a glance. The females are plainer and mostly hornless, and the two sexes look like different animals entirely.
The adults feed on tree sap and ripe fruit, while the grubs chew through rotting wood for months before pupating. The species ranges from the eastern Himalaya through mainland Southeast Asia, and the warm, wet forests of Medog suit it perfectly. In parts of its range it is a famous pet beetle, kept in boxes and fed on banana, prized simply for how extraordinary it looks. Males use their horns in pushing contests at feeding sites, though the weapons are more about posture than damage, and most clashes end with one beetle simply walking away.
The name hardwickii honours Thomas Hardwicke, the British naturalist of the early 1800s whose collections helped introduce European science to the insects of India and the Himalaya. Two centuries later, his beetle is still turning heads in the same mountain range where it was first found.
