Last week we spent a few days in Galloway where, down on the Mull of Galloway we found several of these stunning rose chafer beetles Cetonia aurata. They seem to have a particular liking for hogweed flower umbels - in fact, I don't think we saw any on any other flower.
I spent an hour on a hot afternoon photographing them and - for such large beetles (20mm. long) - they are remarkable active, taking to the air with a loud buzz if you get too close. When rose chafers fly they extend their wings and then close their wing cases (elytra) over their abdomen again, unlike beetles like the ladybird that keep their wing cases extended to generate aerodynamic like. You can see a wonderful compostite picture of a rose chafer in flight at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cetonia_aurata_take_off_composition_05172009.jpg
- take a look, you'll be amazed.
Also take a look at a video of this beetle feeding and taking off at http://www.arkive.org/rose-chafer/cetonia-aurata/video-00.html
While I was searching for these videos on the web - which has a fantastic tendency to throw up random, interesting items - I came across this remarkable snippet of information from a 150 year-old edition of the British Medical Journal (the 'hydrophobia' it refers to is the old name for rabies):
ALLEGED REMEDY FOR HYDROPHOBIA. At a recent meeting of the Academy of Sciences in Palis, M. Guerin-Meneville sent in a letter on the Cetonia aurata, or rose beetle, which for some time past has engrossed the attention of naturalists as a remedy for hydrophobia. M. Meneville stated, from personal experience, that in the governments of Voroneje and Koursk, in Russia, it is customary to give dogs half a beetle in powder from time to time, mixed with bread crumbs, as a preservative against that disease;
British Medical Journal 5th. December 1857,Medical News p. 1017
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