Do you have ground beetles in your home? Don’t be afraid!

(Picture from the Internet)

Guests of this issue

Zhang Jinshuo, Deputy Director and Research Librarian of the National Museum of Zoology

Shi Jun, PhD in Botany

Recently, many Beijing residents have reported that a beetle-like insect has appeared in their homes. What kind of insect is this? How can we deal with it?

(Picture from the Internet)

What is the greedy ground beetle?

This insect has a black shell, two antennae on its head, and three pairs of legs. At first glance, it looks a bit like a cockroach.

Zhang Jinshuo, deputy director and research curator of the National Museum of Zoology, said that this insect is called the greedy ground beetle.

Zhang Jinshuo:

The order Coleoptera is what we usually call beetles, and one of the large categories is called Carabidae, which belongs to the family Carabidae.

In fact, whether in Beijing or all over the country, there are many ground beetles, and the greedy ground beetle is just one of them.

Some experts now believe that it is the Chinese greedy ground beetle, which is also one of the entire greedy ground beetle family.

It mainly preys on small insects and even maggots of flies, or some relatively soft fleshy insects and worms it sees on the ground, including earthworms or the larvae of some insects on the ground, such as some moth larvae and caterpillars.

Sometimes they also eat some tender plant seeds or a small amount of plant food.

In the opinion of Shi Jun, a doctor of botany, this insect is not entirely beneficial to humans:

Shi Jun:

It feeds mainly on plants, mainly on the ears of some grass plants. Generally speaking, we regard it as an insect that may be harmful to agricultural production. It appears on millet, wheat, and grass.

Of course, the Chinese ground beetle itself has a rather varied diet. It not only eats plant-based food, but may also eat some small insects. For example, red spider mites are also on their menu, so this type of insect needs to be viewed from both sides.

Pests? Beneficial insects? Concepts need to change

Zhang Jinshuo, deputy director and research curator of the National Museum of Zoology, believes that we need to change the traditional way of judging insects as pests or beneficial insects, represented by the greedy ground beetle:

Zhang Jinshuo:

In fact, I personally strongly oppose the classification of beneficial insects and pests.

In my opinion, from the perspective of ecology and zoology, there is no such thing as beneficial insects and harmful insects. They appeared earlier than humans, and human development has changed the environment. There is no such thing as beneficial or harmful insects.

If you grab it or put your hand near its mouth, it may bite you, but it will not actively attack people.

Many insects have very strong bite force in their upper and lower jaws. For example, do you think ants are aggressive towards humans? In fact, they are generally not aggressive, but if you catch an ant and it bites you suddenly, you will feel pain.

Generally speaking, if a greedy ground beetle bites you, it will not contain any toxins or harmful substances, so don't worry.

Greedy ground beetles have appeared in many places, and their population is growing explosively?

Not only in Beijing, but also in Tianjin, Hebei and other places, many netizens have shown pictures or videos of greedy ground beetles appearing in their homes on various social platforms.

(Picture from the Internet)

Zhang Jinshuo believes that there is no evidence that the population of the greedy ground beetle has exploded, so there is no need to worry too much:

Zhang Jinshuo:

In the era of self-media, anyone who sees an insect can post a video on Douyin or a circle of friends, and in this case, the level of attention is relatively high. But how many are there in his home? Is there 10,000, 1,000, or only one? There is no data on this, and it is impossible to say to what extent the increase is.

This season itself is a breeding season. As many insects need to reproduce in the fall, they appear more frequently during this period, which is within the normal range.

In fact, the greedy ground beetle and some other insects are normally distributed and exist in Beijing. At present, there is no obvious sign of a large population outbreak.

It’s just that everyone has a lot of feelings based on the online videos, and it’s too early to draw conclusions. It may not be scientific or rigorous.

How to deal with greedy ground beetles in your home?

Zhang Jinshuo introduced that the greedy ground beetle is not only widely distributed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, but also in most parts of my country, including Inner Mongolia in the north, Fujian and Taiwan in the south, Anhui and Jiangsu in the east, Guangxi and Guizhou in the west, and even in North Korea, Japan and Russia.

If there are ground beetles or other insects entering your home, it is more appropriate to use "physical methods" to deal with them:

Zhang Jinshuo:

As you can tell from its name, the ground beetle is a walking beetle. It is not good at flying and often crawls on the ground. It is not like some insects that will crawl into the ditch or sewer. It has a certain tendency to move towards light at night, so sometimes it will go to human houses. If there are some gaps in the house or if the house is a bungalow, the probability of its appearance will be higher.

If it happens, normally the easiest way to deal with it is to just pick it up and throw it away.

You should be cautious when using drugs directly on insects, because if you don't know the scope of application of some drugs, they may not be effective after being applied. Secondly, long-term use of some drugs will cause insects to develop resistance to them; some highly toxic drugs may not be safe to use. For example, the use of camphor will not cause great harm to humans, but long-term use may have certain potential risks.

So if there is a large-scale insect outbreak at home, Beijing has plant protection stations, animal epidemic prevention departments, etc., and you can contact some professional agencies to handle it.

In the future, we need to establish a "big ecological perspective"

Zhang Jinshuo also suggested that we should also change our mindset and establish a broad ecological perspective when dealing with insects in cities:

Zhang Jinshuo:

In addition to flies and mosquitoes, common insects in cities include some bugs in the rice, some gnats in the toilets, which are small flying insects, and some crawling earwigs.

These insects themselves do not cause direct harm to human health, and basically do not cause direct harm to household items, so there is no need to be afraid.

There should still be some insects in the urban ecosystem. The city is also an ecosystem. The long-term spraying of pesticides and insecticides in our urban ecosystem has posed a certain threat to the healthy insect population in the city. Even bees, butterflies and dragonflies are very rare now.

Everyone should have some scientific understanding that these insects themselves will not cause direct harm to humans, and they are also part of the city.

Cockroaches may be considered disgusting, but if you keep your kitchen clean, using some cockroach medicine can have a certain effect if there are too many of them. But if you look at them normally, they are also a normal existence.

From a conceptual point of view, you should have a broad ecological perspective, and as long as it does not directly affect your life, you do not need to deal with it too deliberately.

Source: Science Popularization China