Flower makes a meal for a beetle May 12 2008
It’s not only the “big five” that are worth watching in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve: the wonderful construction and function of smaller creatures like the CMR bean beetle (Mylabris oculata) have also fascinated the Earth-Touch film crew.
In the clip CMR bean beetle eats flowers, the insect feeds on a wild cotton plant and in doing so pollinates the plant.
This beetle is one of the family of blister beetles. The secretion it can produce from the joints of its legs can blister the skin of a human being.
The CMR part of its name comes from its colours, the same as those of the Cape Mounted Rifle Corps, a police force in the old Cape Colony.
More Earth-Touch footage of insects can be found here:
Beetles roll dung balls (filmed in the Blyde Canyon, South Africa)
Mossy old tree hosts tiny creatures (Hawaan Forest, South Africa)
Island life (Okavango Delta, Botswana)
Beetle and adder on Namib sands (Namib Desert, Namibia)
Ants and spider work at sunrise (Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve, South Africa)
Bees busy at tree trunk hive (Khao Yai National Park, Thailand)
You can also see the large-scale effects of insects on the environment in the Yellowstone National Park clip, Fire in the life of the forest.
Image © Earth-Touch 2008
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