Superbowl Sunday. Who cares about the game? It must be the commercials. Of course, the best commercials contain (what else?) insects.
The iconic Volkswagon Beetle is named for its “beetle” shape. The commercial for the 2011 Superbowl features CGI insects. Included are dragonflies, plodding Carabids (ground beetles), and the main character, what appears to be an eleodes beetle with racing stripes.
We see the beetle skid to a stop to avoid a collision with a large centipede. It takes air, like a skier over a mogul. It races past dueling praying mantises. (What’s up with that?) It races the wrong way through an army of ants, then leaps off a log over a caterpillar feeding on a plant. Finally it skids to a jump stop before morphing into an automobile beetle.
The video is on Youtube through the link below. Comments on insects or identifiable species in the video are welcome.
Really cool commercial
. Thanks for sharing this. Insects rock!
The beetles at the beginning are from the family Passalidae (bess beetles, patent leather beetles, horned passalus). Then you have the centiped which looks like some kind of Scolopendra, followed by the praying mantids (Mantodea), and the leaf cutting ants (Formicidae). The beetle definitely is either a teneb (Tenebrionidae) or my choice a pleasing fungus beetle (Erotylidae) to stay with the apparent jungle theme.
I think you are correct. The beetles at the beginning do more closely resemble the horned passalid. In one of the stills, I can clearly see the horn. What are they doing out of their logs?
I vote for Tenebrionid for the main character. The body shape and tapered abdomen resembles the desert clown beetle, Eleodes.
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