Beautiful tiger beetle and its funky metallic coat - Earth.com

Beautiful tiger beetle and its funky metallic coat

Today’s Image of the Day is a close-up look at a tiger beetle and its funky metallic coat. Tiger beetles are known as aggressive predators that can run as fast as 5.6 miles per hour, which turns out to be 125 body lengths per second! While they have sharp vision, tiger beetles can run so fast that they temporarily blind themselves because their eyes don’t have enough time to form an image of their surroundings. Tiger beetles typically live in the dry parts of southern Africa.

Tiger beetles have been in the news recently as scientists have learned that neonicotinoids – a popular insecticide – are much more harmful to predatory insects than previously thought. When neonicotinoids coatings are added to corn and soybean seeds, they have been seen to drastically reduce the number of predatory insects like the tiger beetle.

 

News coming your way
The biggest news about our planet delivered to you each day