Sexing the doodlebug

A rainy day today but there's still plenty of life at Sandy Beach. Evn on the walls of the Ponderosa.

Wikipedia tells me that "Antlions are a family of insects, classified as Myrmeleontidae, from the Greek myrmex, meaning 'ant', and leon, meaning 'lion'. Antlions are small, fully developed larvae being 1.5 cm, and adults being 4 cm. Antlions are omnivorous. The antlion larvae eat ants and other insects, while the adult antlion eats pollen and nectar.

"The antlion is most often called a 'doodlebug'. It gets this name due to the odd winding, spiralling trails it leaves in the sand while looking for a good location to build its trap. These trails look like someone has doodled in the sand and hence the name doodlebug."
Source

Well, there ya go! I don't think they are most often called 'doodlebugs' at all, because I (like most people) don't live in America, something that Wikipedians are prone to forget. In this country, we just call them antlions.

Still and all, they're an interesting creature. When I was a teenager I used to have a few antlions in my bedroom, in a shoebox. Even wrote a poem about antlions. But I was quite grown up -- ancient, in fact -- before I ever saw one flying. I knew the ones in the sand in the shoebox were larvae, but of what I was unaware. So this bloke has paid me a visit just to seal the deal. S/he's rather beautiful is s/he not? I have no idea how to tell the sexes apart and I didn't try very hard. I wouldn't want to bug it.

By the way, there's a whole website devoted to antlions. And that's where this this info about antlions in medieval bestiaries, and this riddle comes from:

Dudum compositis ego nomen gesto figuris:
Ut leo, sic formica vocor sermone Pelasgo
Tropica nominibus signans praesagia duplis,
Cum rostris avium nequeam resistere rostro.
Scrutetur sapiens, gemino cur nomine fingar!

[I long have borne the name of hybrid form:
Both ant and lion I am called in Greek
A double metaphor, foreboding doom;
My beak cannot ward off the beaks of birds.
Let wise men search out why my names are twain.]

which is apparently by St Aldhelm (find him in the Book of Days if you want to know more).

(Click thumbnail to enlarge)

Categories: insects, antlion, larvae, myrmeleontidae