Just recently, Paluma residents Jodie and Danno discovered a very curious insect had taken up residence in their Smith Crescent home.
Take a look at this creepy crawly! The photo is a bit blurry, but those big hairy legs are very clear.
Can anyone provide an identification or any insight into what it is?
We had one too, just before we left for Tasmania.
Cheers
Linda
Here is the website for the Atlas of Living Australia. This is a better website to look at its population distribution within Eastern Australia. You can also ‘record a sighting’ if you wish too! Might be fun to put this feathery fella on the stats map!
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:5b584743-ca07-456a-9883-a84e0d2b66d9
Thanks for the information Jamie. A remarkable beetle indeed. I wonder what purpose those ‘branched antennae’ serve. It must be a bit like living with two tree branches on your head?!! Yet another example of the unique and amazing environment in which we live.
In most insects elaborate, branched antennae are used to detect mates that release a chemical pheremone attractant.
The fancy antennae are on the males. They can sniff the female from hundreds of metres away, getting an accurate directional feed.
The “hairy legs” are part of this creature’s branched antennae. It’s a beetle, but no idea beyond that. If you google “beetle pectinate antennae” and browse through the images you will see lots of beetles with pretty weird branching antenna including a Pinterest image (see below) that looks pretty similar to the one in this post. Unfortunately there is no species or family name attached to the Pinterest image.
Jamie
I’m on it! Will have an answer soon, definitely a Longicorn of some kind. Ah-ha! Here we are: Feather-horned Longicorn Piesarthrius marginellus
(https://www.jungledragon.com/image/37004/feather_horned_longicorn_piesarthrius_marginellus.html)
Great work. Nice to be able to put a name to this little guy.