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Giraffe-Necked Weevil

Giraffe-Necked Weevil STEM Geography Visual Arts

One of the strangest creatures on the island of Madagascar is a giraffe-necked weevil.  There’s a reason for those long necks ... males use them for fighting.

This image depicts a male Giraffe weevil (Trachelophorus giraffa) as it appeared in Ranomafana National Park - in Madagascar - on the 13th of January, 2008.

The females’ necks are not as long as their male counterparts, but they have powerful legs.  Using their legs to fold a leaf in half, females curl-up the end of a leaf.  Mothers place a single egg into that curled-up leaf end. Each leaf nest seems to have its own design.  

As she builds her nest, the female giraffe-necked weevil exerts a great deal of effort for a single egg.  Among other things, she creates a kind of velcro strip which holds the nest together.  

When everything is finished, she snips-off the leaf nest and lets it fall to the forest floor.  If it survives, the egg  will hatch there.

The photo, seen above, is by Axel Strauss.


Media Credits

Image, described above, online via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

 

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