Batocera sp. How to look after?

Thank you, I am located in Islamabad, Pakistan. And this, indeed is a Batocera rufomaculata, it matches exactly with the pictures on the internet. Would you also happen to know whether this beetle is rare or not? And is it safe to touch? I also have no idea how to keep it alive, what to feed it. In fact, I do not know what to do with it.

By the way, your beetle may not be B. rufomaculata. There are a lot of very similar species, but bandrow can probably advise at least which species are known from Pakistan.

Adam.

Please let us know if it will eat the mango pulp.

Adam.

Update!

I tried a few types of foods for it. I gave it a very small amount of mango pulp (about the size of a half pea) but I did not find any evidence of it eating it. So then I took a green stem from the mango tree (about the diameter of a pencil) and sliced it half lengthwise and collected the white (partly soft) solid inside the stem. I put that too in the container, but it did not eat. I then peeled the green outermost surface of the same stem, sliced it into a small 1cm by 1mm piece ( approx.) and put it in the container, still no luck. I did some looking and at one place I found that females are given sugary water in captivity. I took water and boiled it, put sugar in it and let it cool. And put it in the container with a syringe. The beetle drank it. But not much.

Apart from this feeding regime, I made another observation. So I may be wrong but I believe I observed it's poop. The best way to describe it is like the shape of the feet of the beetle. At the end, there's a sort of a "hook", behind the hook there's what seems to me like "joints" of some sort and behind those joints, there's the long leg. Now imaging that part between the "hook" and the "leg" that's what I saw in the container. Lots of it. Another way to describe it is imagine what you would get if you chopped its tentacles about 1mm in length. The "poop" was dense brown and appeared completely black under low light. I did not, however, see it "during the act".


I also noticed times of extreme movement and times of complete rest. It would be desperately moving all around the container going crazy and at times it would be staying still. Even on moving the container upside down, it would act as if it were dead.

Anyway, the bad news is, (no, it's not dead) my mother, she has very strong, should you say, moral values and love for animals and apparently all living things, she made me release the beetle. It's no longer in captivity and I do not know where it is. However I can describe the time of its release. From the terrace, I opened the container upside down. The beetle fell 6 feet down ( I do not know whether it opened its wings during the fall), it landed exactly under where it was released. I noticed a complete 360 degree movement of its tentacles. It's almost as if it was checking whether they still rotate in all directions. The direction was random, sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti clockwise. It won't on for about ten seconds. Then it walked around a little, climbing a tiny rock, then for a brief pause, it opened its wing covers and flew straight up to the sky. It flew right past my face to which I instincyly jumped away, losing sight of it. And that's the end of my beetle observations.

Hi Awan,

Thank you for giving us the details of your feeding attempts and the happy ending to the story! I'm sure the beetle found its way to whatever it was driven to accomplish - maybe find a mate and make more beetles.

Adam - thanks too for the info. I just assumed they must come to lights, but maybe not so much. There are several very common species in Thailand and I would think that you'd have seen plenty if light trapping extensively. Of course, they could be one of the genera like Titanus that seem to prefer very large lights elevated high in the air.

Some of the genera here in the U.S. that are related (distantly) to Batocera do not come to lights. In particular, Plectrodera scalator is found diurnally on its host plants, and the introduced Anoplophora glabripennis behaves in the same way.

Cheers!
Bandrow

I’ve collected 3 species of Batocera from lights in south west China but they were not plentiful. I would get one about every 2 weeks of continuous light trapping. It was interesting as I set up my light sheet in my apartment porch on the 6th floor and the Batocera must have had a distance to fly.