Half-insane "dung scarabs"

I managed to find three Cotinis mutabilis today (two soggy, one sitting on ground).

While still underwater, the less drowned of the two wet scarabs expelled a beautiful white jet of liquid excrement when I grabbed it. Cotinis is a cetoniine flower/fruit scarab (not a melolonthine June beetle, as the English name suggests), but its defense mechanisms certainly wouldn't look out of place on a smelly Egyptian ballroller!

The more drowned of the two was unconscious

I tried to video them in the sun (the devices are terrible in shade), but like several previous attempts the enormous beetles simply overheated and ran away

The less-drowned flew off

The ground one burrowed to escape the sun

I left the unconscious beetle under a tree, and after recovering it stayed in the shade licking fruit juices. Its exoskeleton was severely "rusted" though; it certainly wouldn't have been a good spokesbeetle for the Domino campaign.




I couldn't allow half of my remaining photo subjects to casually sink into the ground, so I dug up and seized the digger

More accurately, the digger (whose back was by then covered in white liquid droppings after a misfire) seized me right after I seized it

It inseminated my finger, but not before carefully excreting brown sludge to relieve itself

(Cotinis males will repeatedly mate with fingers, other males, and in one instance a metal lid; when one's adult life is normally a handful of months, not being reckless carries a severe genetic-fitness risk)



I carried both of them to a shady area, where they had some minor fights over apple peel (the rusty beetle was quite famished and zealously monopolized its food) and later half-buried their faces in the dirt for a few hrs in an attempt to ward off the heat

After they finished sleeping I offered some more drinks (see below)

Overheated finger addict licks melon

I couldn't initially find the rusty beetle after it woke up, but when the sun cooled off (my only and last chance to get a video) the "finger addict" was nowhere to be seen, the rusty beetle having evidently evicted it from the fruit










Random update: moldy-smelling kitchen towel shreds (I have a cocofiber shortage) are no place for a darkling beetle to be burrowing in, so I released the Coniontis