Mora beetle

Mora beetles were huge, stinking bugs with green eyes, a giant horn on their noses, ten legs, and a scaly exoskeleton made of chitin. This type of beetle's hiss and chitter included a noise from its horn that sounded like the word "Flee. Flee." Denizens at least of the planet Tatooine, the insect's precise origins in the galaxy remain unclear.
Gardulla the Hutt fancied mora beetles and was known to keep them in cages in her palace dungeons near the Dune Sea on Tatooine. She retained a Kubaz gourmet chef from Kubindi who specialized in cooking insects that were bred for size and tastiness. The bugs—as part of a scientific process the Kubaz called insecticultureThe Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia—were fed chemicals and injected with growth hormones to cause them to unnaturally mutate and increase in size to their gigantic forms.
In 32 BBY, a large mora beetle was let loose from its cage by the young Bothan Dorn, in an effort to cause mayhem and confusion while he and his friends, including the boy Anakin Skywalker, Kitster Banai, and the young Twi'lek Pala Kwi'teksa, sought to free several captured Ghostling children. Gardulla planned to use these delicate and beautiful native creatures of the planet Datar as ornaments for her luxurious pleasure garden that was then under construction. The loosed mora beetle was soon chasing not only terrorized Gamorrean guards down palace passageways, but also an infuriated but panicked Gardulla herself around her pool in her palace's waterfall- and fountain-filled pool room. The beetle was eventually shot and killed with a blaster rifle by the Dug henchman Khiss as it charged to attack the Dug's professional Podracer master, Sebulba.Episode I Adventures 5: The Ghostling Children(pp. 83-98); Episode I Adventures 6: The Hunt for Anakin Skywalker (p. 5)
==Appearances==
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==Notes and references==
Category:Beetles