Australian Jewel Beetles Loved Beer Bottles to Death

Although bees and ants are primarily responsible for organizing and carrying out tasks, insects generally receive praise for their ostensibly extraordinary capacities to do so. In general, the other members of the insect kingdom are disregarded, and perhaps that is for the best, at least in the case of the Australian gem beetle. They are not known for their intricate hive organization or their work ethic, but rather for one thing. They'll kill themselves attempting to mate with beer bottles, that's the fear.

The behavior of Australian beetles was accidentally uncovered by researchers some time ago. Two scientists were studying something completely different in the field when they just so happened to see these beetles doing their hardest to use broken beer bottles as a source of food.

There were a lot of insects and bottles, which suggested it wasn't an accident. There was no mistake—these bugs were attempting to be busy. They were able to see the beetles trying to mate in a scientifically accurate manner. These even set up fresh bottles and noticed that they drew in more males since they would latch on and needed to be yanked off by force. One even carried on despite ants biting at its genitalia.

The female beetles were virtually exactly the same shade of brown as the particular brand of bottles that the beetles had chosen, the researchers observed. Additionally, the females' carapaces were dimpled like bottles. The males were therefore just perplexed. However, they were so devoted that they were willing to keep going until they died in the sun or were picked off and eaten by predators.

But there is a happy conclusion to the tale. The business that produced the alluring bottles adjusted the design to eliminate the perplexing dimples after the scientists published their findings. After then, the insects lost interest.