Bamboo weevil: the main competitor of the giant panda (7 photos)

There is a term in ecology lore - symmetrical competition. This is the name for a situation in which two different species are fighting for the same resource (light, fertile soil, food), but none of them receives a decisive advantage. Moreover, animals can be extremely different from each other, just like pandas and bamboo weevils!





I would put it in some game. As a monster.

Everyone already knows everything about the first ones: black and white vegan bears eat 30 kilos of bamboo salad a day. The bamboo weevil is also not small, but only in comparison with other insects - 2-4 centimeters are covered in a red-black chitinous exoskeleton. It would seem that the advantages of the clubfoot are obvious, but it is the weevils that are the main competitors of the Chinese weevil for food!



Sorry, but you can’t compete with a panda in cuteness.

The fact is that animals have chosen different survival strategies. If pandas eat a lot and reproduce little, then with weevils everything is exactly the opposite. It’s not surprising: who can eat a panda? That's right, no one. And who can kill a defenseless fat bug? That's right, all and sundry: mammals, birds and even other insects.





Did you see this comrade in the garden? Your actions?

The bamboo weevil has no defense, and they do not know how to fight. The beetle's only weapons are claws, which cling perfectly to rough surfaces, and a small mouthpart on a long rostrum. There is only one living creature for which the weevil poses a danger - bamboo.



Just look at this climbing equipment on legs!

With such equipment, smoking bamboo... that is, drilling it is a pleasure! Secure yourself well with your tenacious paws, gnaw a hole in the hard mechanical tissues, reach with the rostrum to reach the tasty tissues from the middle - and you’re done! Why chew vegetation on an industrial scale if you can eat the most caloric part of it?



I'm doing drilling.

People and pandas are not happy with this situation. The former spend a lot of money on insecticides and their development. And the latter periodically die of hunger: the bears are not very mobile, if the weevils eat all the bamboo in the area, they will simply die of hunger! But the lack of vegetation does not bother insects much. Adult weevils live happily on a diet of other grains (yes, bamboo is a grain!). Only larvae cannot do without it.



I love the screams of hungry pandas in the morning.

Babies of bamboo weevils live inside the bamboo and emerge just before pupation. The only sign of an infected plant is a small round hole in the stem, where the female has chewed a hole to lay her eggs. When the kids crawl out, only emptiness will remain in place of the sweet core.



We won't fall for your pretty eyes, weevil! You are a villain!

Despite all the efforts of Chinese scientists, insects are devouring entire fields of bamboo and driving local farmers to ruin. Pandas are not able to do this; they generally have problems with numbers in recent decades. If this continues, competition will become asymmetrical. The insects will take over most of the bamboo, and the bears will only have to suck their paws.