Even the largest spiders, the tarantulas, are hunted by very large pepsis wasps. The longhorn beetles are a large group of beetles with over 1200 north american species. Many wood-boring beetles are surprisingly hairy. It is thought that these slippery hairs help the newly emerging beetles to escape the narrow tunnels that they create in the living tissue of trees that they feed upon as larvae. Weevils are beetles, as the largest group in the largest order in the animal kingdom, they are the commonest insect on earth.
Some species assume bizarre shapes, many are pests of crops and stored products.
Few of the many plant products we value are safe from these omnipresent insects. Grains, nuts, cotton and tobacco are among the many crops that these beetles consume a significant portion of. So significant in fact that the boll weevil, a serious pest of cotton fields, at one time jeopardized the viability of the industry. Indeed the efforts of the boll weevil are credited by some as prompting the southern U.S. economy to diversify to other crops and industries. The species in this photograph is tentatively identified as a species introduced to control plants competing for space in orchard country.