Christmas beetles found inside pool: rare December insect
An Aussie man has captured the moment he discovered hundreds of Christmas beetles while cleaning his swimming pool.
He took to Reddit to share his unexpected discovery, posting a video of the crawling insects.
The Christmas beetles can be seen inside a pool cleaning net, caught and saved from drowning.
“I do the pool cleaning pretty early in the morning,” the man explained, urging viewers to turn up their volume to hear the “creepy crawly sound.”
“Last year there was a pretty decent swarm in the same area but I don’t recall seeing THIS many at a single time,” he said.
“I had to rescue a bunch the previous morning but nowhere near this many.”
Reddit users took to comments to express their shock at the amount of Christmas beetles seen in the video.
“I haven’t seen this many Christmas beetles in 20 years! That’s amazing,” one user wrote.
“This guy be hoarding all the Christmas beetles,” wrote another, “I haven’t seen one in years.”
One wrote: “Amazed so many are still alive after a night in a pool. The only ones I retrieve have already drowned.”
Christmas beetles belong to the scarab family of beetles and are commonly seen all across Australia close to December.
They can be identified by their vibrant metallic brown, yellow or pink colours and are quite large and chunky in size.
Commenters pointed out this abundance of Christmas beetles is a rare find, as their numbers are suspected to be in decline over the last couple of years.
One user wrote: “I’ve not seen so many harmless species for years that were once abundant.”
“There’s a citizen science project looking into the decline of these guys. I reckon they’d be interested in how many you have!”
For the second year in a row scientists from the University of Sydney are calling for volunteers (dubbed “citizen scientists”) to identify and record Christmas beetles.
The total number of Christmas beetles has reportedly been in decline over the last 30 years, but due to a lack of a formal monitoring program there is no sure way to identify just how bad the decline really is, and whether it is affecting all of the 35 species.
“We desperately need people in communities everywhere in Australia, even places where perhaps they haven’t seen Christmas beetles, to keep an eye out for them,” entomologist and Associate Professor Tanya Latty said.
“Australia is a huge, huge country. So, without having eyes everywhere, we can’t really identify the problem areas,” she said.
Aussies are urged to take pictures of any Christmas beetles they encounter and upload them onto iNaturalist, a website used to track and understand the current beetle distribution.
Last year the project was a huge success with 6592 Christmas beetle sightings reported by volunteers.
34 Christmas beetle species were observed, including four ‘missing’ beetle species:
Anoplognathus rhinastus and Anoplognathus nebulosus – last reported in 1999
Anoplognathus multiseriatus – last reported in 1970s
Anoplognathus vietor – last reported in 1986.
The proposed reason for the decline in Christmas beetle numbers is due to their habitat — grassy woodland areas — getting used up for housing with many social media users agreeing.
“At least someone still gets Christmas beetles. We did before our area got developed,” one person wrote, “Now, not even one. Very sad.”
“Absolutely none anymore in my town for the past several years,” agreed another.
One simply said: “I miss these little guys. I live near wetlands and only see 1 or 2 now, years ago they were everywhere.”
But things don't look so drab this year, with many sharing their stories of Christmas beetle sightings this year.
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“They’re bloody everywhere this year. Opened my window for a brief moment and 5 flew in,” one person commented.
“Comparatively this year seems to have been better. I’ve seen way more beetles this year than probably the previous 9 years I’ve been at my house,” replied another.
“All I want for Christmas is to see more Christmas beetles outside,” a person wished.
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