A bug built for a Halloween horror film
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- October 25, 2024
- 1440
With the trees in full autumn flame and most of my garden plants shriveling down to husks of their summer selves, it might seem an odd time to talk or even think about insects. However, when the world throws something at you that you’ve never even seen before, it’s time to take notice.
Busy plucking the last of the red chili peppers off the plant I’d hidden amongst the landscaping outside my office building, I bent toward a low branch and found myself face to face with a large, long-legged insect resting stiffly on the warm brick wall. While insects of a certain form and color immediately tell me “do not touch” (wings, stingers, and a yellow and black abdomen are often dead giveaways), this bug had none of those. It was clearly not a spider as six, rather than the eight legs stood as a broad base to its curious body. Still, I chose against my inclination to grab the thing for an examination and instead moved my camera in for a good, close look.
A mostly flat character with a behind about the width of a finger, the bug had a curious hump on its middle section that resembled a toothed cog from some sort of insect-themed play kit. This “wheel” was the dead giveaway I’d found my first North American wheel bug.
A member of a larger assembly of insects known collectively as “assassin bugs,” one look at the bug’s head and it was clear what he did for a living as a large, sharp tube (or beak) protruded from beyond a pair of bulbous eyes. If the bug had stood at a human scale, the beak would appear as a hypodermic needle the size of a sword, ready to suck the life out of any critter in its path. This guy had likely spent the summer working overtime policing neighborhood plants for herbivorous interlopers.
The wheel bug operates like something straight out of a horror film. With a pair of raptor-like front legs, it seizes its prey, typically a soft-bodied caterpillar or sawfly larva, and then punches a hole into its body with the previously mentioned “piercing-sucking mouth part.” What happens next is the really nasty stuff. The wheel bug regurgitates an enzyme that not only paralyzes its victim, it also predigests its insides. Then at the wheel bug’s leisure, it literally sucks the life out of its victim.
Heroes sometimes seem few and far between amid the deep green of the summer garden, but the wheel bug qualifies easily in this regard, gobbling dozens if not hundreds of defoliating larva through the course of a one-year life cycle. Adult wheel bugs die off in the winter with egg masses making their way through to the next generation come spring. Hopefully, this particular bug had gotten the job done and I’ll have a new band of troopers to guard my garden next season!
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.