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Animal Themes
Insects
Invertebrates

Rhinoceros Beetles

Rhinoceros Beetles
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.31

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    lifestyles, metamorphosis, harmless, heavily, mainly, vegetation, actually, beetles, rhinoceros, armor, adult, ounce, transform, ease, stage, pounds

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Other Languages
     Spanish: Los Escarabajos Rinoceronte

Rhinoceros Beetles   
1     "Rhinoceros beetles are the world's strongest animals!" This statement may raise some eyebrows, as we all know that elephants can carry hundreds or thousands of pounds on their backs. Even camels can carry as much as 300 pounds with ease. If we simply had rhinoceros beetles carry what camels have on their backs, rhinoceros beetles would surely be squashed! Well, when we talk about how strong an animal is, we are not comparing the actual weight that it can lift. Instead, we are comparing how much an animal can carry relative to its own weight. Elephants can carry up to 25% of their own weight on their backs, camels about 20%, leaf-cutting ants about 30 times their own weight, and rhinoceros beetles about 850 times! There's no doubt that rhinoceros beetles are the world's strongest animals!
 
2     Rhinoceros beetles wear black armor and have long, large horns sticking out of their heads. In fact, their horns, resembling rhinoceros', are how they get their name. Rhinoceros beetles use their horns for many different things - digging holes in the ground as hideouts, foraging through the heavily littered floor of rain forests, and fighting off other rhinoceros beetles. Even though rhinoceros beetles look fierce with their horns, they are actually harmless insects. Measuring no more than 2 1/2 inches long and weighing less than 1 ounce, rhinoceros beetles mainly feed on rotten fruits and sap.
 
3     Like all insects, rhinoceros beetles must go through a stage called metamorphosis to reach adulthood. Metamorphosis is like a total makeover in appearances, lifestyles, and body forms. Rhinoceros beetles lay their eggs in decaying trees, stumps, or other vegetation. Once hatched, their young, called larvae, feed on rotten wood or compost in the areas where they live. As the larvae reach their full length, they enter metamorphosis. They make cells in soil and put themselves inside for a couple of months. We call these cells pupae. Slowly, the larvae transform into rhinoceros beetles - new limbs and muscles replace the old ones, wings are formed, and horns are grown. Then, rhinoceros beetles break out of their pupae and use their horns to dig their way to the surface. Adult rhinoceros beetles can live for about 4 months.
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