Animal · Germany, France, United Kingdom
Stag beetle
Lucanus cervus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The stag beetle is the largest beetle in Europe, and the male carries two huge brown jaws that look exactly like a deer's antlers. Those antlers are not horns at all but enormously enlarged mouthparts.
Picture credit: Daniela A. Antoni (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Flocci Nivis (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the stag beetle live?
Home: in old oak woods and sunny garden edges.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, Romania, Hungary.
Conservation status from the IUCN: close to being at risk.
The short profile
Fully grown: 3.5–7.5 cm long (males). It weighs about 0 004 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A stag beetle spends nearly its whole life out of sight. The pale, fat larva lives three to seven years inside rotting wood, in an old oak stump, a dead root or sometimes a compost heap, and slowly chews it into crumbs. Only in early summer does the finished beetle dig its way out, and then it has just a few weeks left. Males fly at dusk with a loud, clumsy hum, looking for females, and when two meet on a trunk they wrestle with their antlers and try to lift each other off the bark. The jaws look frightening but are too weak to pinch hard, while the smaller female has short, strong mouthparts and can nip. Adults no longer eat solid food and instead lap tree sap and the juice of soft fruit with a furry orange tongue. Because old dead wood is tidied away in many places, the species counts as near threatened in Europe.
Find it on the globe
Stag beetle is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why does the male have antlers?
They are not antlers but two enlarged jaws, up to a third of the beetle's whole length. Males use them to wrestle rivals off a branch, not to bite.
Where can you find stag beetles?
In warmer parts of Europe, from southern England and France to Romania and western Kazakhstan, wherever old oaks and dead wood remain. In Germany they often turn up in parks and gardens.
What do the larvae eat?
Only rotting wood, which they chew underground for three to seven years. Without old stumps and dead roots there are no new stag beetles.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
Last checked: