It’s dark and freezing on the mountain. Dave Kavanaugh’s boots crunch across the snow. His headlamp lights the way. Its bright beam shines on the snow ahead. Suddenly, he stops. He sees something. A black beetle scuttles


across the snow. It darts toward a smaller insect struggling in the snow. Chomp! T e beetle grabs its meal and scurries away. Kavanaugh whoops with delight. He has just discovered a new kind of beetle. Kavanaugh is an entomologist. T at’s a


scientist who studies insects. He likes beetles best. A beetle is a kind of insect. It has hard front wings. T ese wings cover and protect a second set of wings. Some beetles use the second set to fly. Kavanaugh came to this mountain looking


for beetles no one has seen before. T e one he finds is a new kind of ice beetle. It joins the more than 300,000 other species, or kinds, of beetles that are already known. So far, he has discovered hundreds of new


beetle species. He has seen beetles as big as his hand and beetles almost too small to see. He has studied their behaviors, habitats, life cycles, and diets. He knows that beetles will eat just about anything.


On the Hunt T e ice beetle is a carnivore. It kills and eats mostly insects. It has a hard time finding prey. T at’s because not many creatures live on top of the mountain. Luckily, the wind helps out. It picks


up insects that live on lower levels of the mountain. It carries them up and dumps them onto the snow. T e insects aren’t used to the cold and the


snow. T ey struggle to survive. Not the ice beetle. It’s at home in its cold habitat. T e ice beetle has a chemical in its body. It


keeps the beetle from freezing. At night, this beetle goes hunting. It pounces on insects stuck in the snow.


4 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER


Hungry Hunters Not all beetles can live in a cold habitat. Kavanaugh has to go to the steamy tropics to study the green tiger beetle. Huge, bulging eyes help it spot prey. Long


legs help it run fast. It’s so fast, it could run across a classroom in a few seconds. T e tiger beetle puts its speed to good use. It darts across the ground to catch up to other insects. T en it slices this prey with its sharp jaws. Not all hunters look as fierce as the tiger


beetle. Take the ladybird beetle, or ladybug, for example. It looks cute. Yet Kavanaugh says it’s a killer. A single ladybug can catch and eat 60 aphids in one day. An aphid is a tiny insect. A female ladybug can destroy a whole aphid


colony. She barges into an aphid nest and lays hundreds of eggs. When the eggs hatch, hungry young ladybugs come out. T ey gobble up aphids by the thousands.


This ladybug swoops in to eat the aphids on this plant.


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