ESPN reporter Lindsey Thiry found herself accosted by an alarmingly big bug at Los Angeles Rams camp Thursday. She was preparing for a live report when the flying creature suddenly dive-bombed in. The bug hovered around Thiry for several seconds until the NFL reporter gave it a good and audible thwack with her mic.
ESPN broadcaster Molly McGrath later interviewed Thiry about the identity of the bug. "What is that, a wasp? What was that, Lindsey?" McGrath asked.
"It was the biggest bug I've ever seen," Thiry answered, having recovered from the ordeal.
No, really—what was that? As someone who frequently fields questions from friends who wish to identify unknown bugs, I wondered if I could help crack the case. I paused the video to see if I could get a better look at the bug in question:
Alas! The image resolution was simply too low to reveal any of the bug's identifying morphological details. I did not dare upload such an image to iNaturalist, my go-to app for identifying animals. I didn't even know if the creature was a bug in the most technical sense of the term, or just another kind of insect. (In taxonomy, a bug refers to an insect in the order Hemiptera, a.k.a. true bugs, which have straw-like mouths. True bugs include cicadas, spotted lanternflies, and bedbugs. But I am no pedant, and so use the term "bug" for all insects. Sue me!) All I knew was that the creature was hefty, could fly, and had been sighted not just in Los Angeles but at Loyola Marymount University, the home of Rams camp. To mount a meaningful investigation with such limited facts seemed not just daunting, but insurmountable.
But then a quick internet search—"big flying bug los angeles"—revealed a likely culprit. In the summer, the skies of Los Angeles are host to the ostentatious flapping of the figeater beetle, Cotinis mutabilis.
Figeaters are big bugs, often an inch long, and are famous for "attacking" locals. But the beetles are not dangerous or even malicious—they are simply big, loud and clumsy. It's hard not to be when you have so much weight to support with just one set of wings. Figeater beetles get their names from their appetites. They don't just love figs, but also feast on any overripe fruit sagging from branches in late summer. Like all other beetles, meaning insects in the order Coleoptera, figeaters are not true bugs, technically speaking.
The figeater beetle is often mistaken for its East Coast doppelganger, the green June beetle, Cotinis nitida. Although green June beetles can also be found in southern California, there were no reports on iNaturalist of any green June beetles on the Loyola Marymount campus, compared to dozens of observations of figeaters. We can safely say Thiry was fending off a figeater. Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects came through with headlines that sensationalized the actual threat of the encounter, such as the California Post's "ESPN reporter fights for her life in battle with rogue beetle at LA Rams camp."
The figeater beetle was not always so reviled by its human neighbors. Archaeologists described 2,000-year-old necklaces made from figeater beetles and found in Bear Ears National Monument in Utah. The beetle's iridescent legs had been snapped off at the joints and strung through their hollow centers. The jewelry was made in the Basketmaker II era in the American Southwest, when societies of Pueblo people were experiencing an agricultural revolution. The surplus of wealth that came with an agricultural lifestyle often coincides with more ornate jewelry, and a figeater's gleaming exoskeleton, the archaeologists argue, would have surely stood out as a precious object. Perhaps the people of Basketmaker II would not have been so quick to bonk such a beetle with a blunt object.
What comes next for the figeater, once revered and now reviled? If ESPN reporters or the Rams community wish to be rid of the invertebrates, their best ally will be a humble worm, such as the microscopic roundworm Heterorhabditis which can function as a biological control agent. Once released in the soil, the worms will hunt down the beetle grubs. You'll need just 250,000 worms per meter of soil, and the worms can be applied with a sprayer nozzle. But Thiry would do well to stay away from the football field during such an application, lest she need to swat away hundreds of thousands of worms.
