So, recently I was bored and mentally ill again (I say that as if I had ever stopped being bored and mentally ill) and chewed through 10 years (and counting) of Baidu forum posts in the span of an afternoon or two*. This did not make me any less bored let alone less mentally ill, but I can't deny it was kind of productive.
*I couldn't be bothered to create an account so I used various gimmicks to get at the loginwalled posts, for example opening links in new tabs, and force-switching the website between desktop and mobile formats on the same device
But without further ado here's some things I've observed:
- Cetoniinae familiar to the European hobby (e.g. Mecynorrhina, Eudicella, and, unsurprisingly, Goliathus) are apparently common in the Chinese live trade
- The above observation may not seem very noteworthy, but on the other hand there is a striking lack of interest in rearing both China-native and exotic Rutelinae; while Chinese hobbyists certainly can and do import American insects (I have long been aware that Dynastes grantii sometimes makes it there alive), I did not encounter any posts about live Chrysina and seriously doubt any of the popular North American species have been reared there (tho I know US-unavailable Chrysina have been reared in Japan)
- Addendum I: the colorful, relatively small "junebug" type hornless native rutelines (Anomala and similar-shaped genera [as opposed to native Popillia] seem to be most frequently mentioned) are posted about primarily by beginners who mistake them for cetoniines and/or haven't "graduated" to the conventional hobby scarabs yet; advanced hobbyists tend to call them "trash" or "dregs" (sometimes affectionately but in most cases just derogatorily, à la "rough fish" in sportfishing) despite their diversity, colors, and considerable size (many of the "dregs" species, though relatively small, are only relatively small; they're quite large by US beetle standards)
- Addendum II: reportedly "they're" quite cannibalistic as larvae, to the point of attacking each other on contact even moments after being put together in empty containers, and are also weirdly vagile as far as scarab grubs go (unclear what "they're" refers to, but probably Anomala and/or similar types since properly kept US Chrysina do not seem particularly so); this does not seem to be the primary reason people hate them. I think they're just spoiled for choice and really stuck up about it, they're often quick to call anything "trash" if it's too common, even the more easily encounterable Large Impressive Native Stags, but especially non-giant insects of any sort (I mean Charismatic Megafauna bias is of course present in the US as well, but one doesn't see the same sort of socioculturally-normalized blatant scorn among enthusiasts there as much)
- Addendum III: however, the "boar/pig* scarabs" (猪金龟; Dicaulocephalus and several other genera) seem to have a bit of a cult following despite the smallness of their horns and dull coloration (and weirdly enough some of their fans are the same people who hate colorful Anomala-types); from what I can gather, they last about a month as adults [shorter than a number of more-popular shortlived hobby scarabs], obligately require a cold period of around 15 Celsius once mature in order to pupate, get deformed during the adult molt easily if the larva lacks access to sufficiently compactable substrate while building its pupal cell, and can eat regular fruit/jelly as adults despite, you know, being rutelines
*猪 does not have either an actually derogatory or affectionately derogatory connotation here; the adults are simply very pig-shaped
- Prionotheca coronata is raised occasionally, but darklings of any sort are not popular (seemingly even less popular than in the Western world, where Bugs in Cyberspace and similar insectfluencers are undoubtedly contributing to the mainstreamization of feigners and headstanders; did you know A. verrucosus is now so well loved that it's actually being imported alive to Europe?) With that being said, I did encounter a few other African tenebrionid spp. being kept
- There have been some consistent, repeatable successes in breeding several spp. of Carabus and other carabids and raising larvae to adulthood; the gist of what was said was that Carabus eggs are weirdly fragile even by egg standards and should not be touched directly (found this out the hard way some yrs ago after close relative Calosoma laid an egg on my hand - it was like tofu, even gentle handling that wouldn't kill an aphid popped the egg immediately, and I have in fact picked up live aphids for the record), too much humidity is bad (aim for no condensation and no glistening of substrate, but not dry enough that the dirt changes color), larvae of some species may be harmed and eventually killed by unnatural foods like saturniid pupae and red meat (my long-held personal suspicion is that this is because many insect spp. used as feeders have an unhealthily high fat content for carabids, the adults being strong enough to tolerate it anyway. Calosoma has been reported in an English-speaking research paper somewhere to refuse beef after being fed too much of it). You can read more here cause I'm too tired to keep talking, though the author says elsewhere that the snail diet isn't a one size fits all, i.e. doesn't work for rearing entomophagous spp.
