Tiger Beetle

About the Tiger Beetle

Scaled to size, tiger beetles are among the fastest running animals on Earth - some cover 120 body lengths per second, so fast that their eyes cannot process the blur and the beetle must sprint, stop to relocate its prey, and sprint again. That stutter-run across bare sand is the field mark before you ever see the beetle clearly.

Up close they are spectacular: long-legged, bug-eyed hunters with huge sickle jaws, many species in polished metallic greens, bronzes, and blues with cream markings. Texas hosts dozens of kinds, from beach specialists to the big grasslands species of bare dirt paths.

Tigers hunt like their namesake - run down, seize, and dispatch - taking ants, flies, caterpillars, and anything else catchable. Their larvae are ambush hunters instead: anchored in vertical burrows, heads flush with the surface, snapping backward at whatever walks past.

They are also famously hard to approach, flying a few yards ahead of every footstep - which makes a frame-filling photograph of one a small trophy of patience.