Mealworms to Darkling Beetles...an Incredible Journey

This is going to be the first of several installments about the life cycles of bugs in my classroom. Thank you in advance for reading about something that not even my dearest friends can tolerate anymore...so I am a little obsessed! I can tell when the people I work with start to get that look like they would rather live through a month of Mondays than keep listening that I have gone from "Endearingly Engaged" to "2 Cats Short of Being the Crazy Lady with the 2 Cats" Anyway...I will start where Room 15 started...mealworms! We got our mealworms and eagerly started investigating their weird (and a little creepy) body structures. They are pretty tough and the kids L-O-V-E them. Initially we had put in pretzel bits and graham crackers as food but then that was replaced by bran cereal. Here is one of our cute little mealworm...

It's so cute with it's segmented shell and little pincher mouth. Yes, these are the silly insects that my kids carry around and put on their shoulders, heads, arms, knees, shoes, noses. They even make little obstacle courses with pencils and markers to put them through.

I love his little cute face in this picture!

After waiting for months and months and months....ok less than a month. Our dearly beloved mealworms turned into "mummies" actually pupae. These particular pupae are disgusting looking. They are similar to chrysalises in that if they are bumped then they wiggle like crazy.

Initially I had put the pupae in with the adult beetles but after a tubbie cleaning in which I found about 30 pupae that had either their heads or butts chewed off I moved the few surviving ones back in with the mealworms. It was super disgusting! Even now the kids sometimes find legs and body bits in the bran flakes...sick!

This is before the adults started chewing off butts!

The adult beetles also eat bran and veggies. They have wings but can't fly and they have very sticky feet. My biggest fear is that somehow they are going to escape and invade my whole room. The kids also love, love, love these (even the ones who were scared at first). They have named them all (which makes it a little more traumatic when Sheldon was found half eaten or Rock went belly up for no apparent reason) and have races with them. I was hesitant at first to stick my hand in the tub but over time I began to do it with courage and bravery.

There are some color variations. The light one is newly hatched. When their wing covers are opened (like the one on the left) you can see the ridges that were also apparent on the pupa.

A good example of the sticky feet I mentioned earlier.