Meatless Meals Not all beetles eat meat. Some beetles are herbivores. T ey eat plants. Many of them have special mouthparts that help them eat. A weevil is a herbivore. It has a


long snout that curves downward. Some weevils have a snout that is longer than their body. T is snout drills into leaves. At the


end of the snout is a pair of sharp jaws. T e jaws snip the leaves into bite-size pieces. T e female giraff e weevil uses a


leaf for another reason. First, she slices the leaf. She rolls the leaf into a tube. T en she lays an egg inside.


Plant Parts T e rhinoceros beetle looks fierce, but it’s not. It likes to eat sap. Sap is the juice flowing inside plants. T is beetle cuts into the plant stem


with its strong jaws. Sap oozes out. Hairs on the beetle’s face brush the sap into its mouth. Unlike the rhinoceros beetle, a


Japanese beetle looks harmless. By itself, it is. Yet these beetles don’t eat alone. An army of them can destroy a plant. Together, they chew on a plant


from the top down. T ey eat the soſt parts of leaves. When they are done, the leaves are full of holes.


This male giraffe weevil has a long neck. It uses its neck to fi ght other weevils.


6 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER


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