i have twelve pet beetles + two velvet ants who i adore and cherish greatly.
select a tab to begin reading about them 𓆣


humanoid beetle dressed in cyberenochian garb, made by me in POV-ray.

to view the beetles who have sadly passed away, click below to enter the beetle graveyard.
Beetle Graveyard

Enoch is one of three blue death feigning beetles, and also the smallest of them! as well as being shy, timid, and very sleepy, i tend to find him either hiding underneath the coconut shell in the tank or trying to make advances on Noumena or Epinoia.
i named him after Enochian magick, so in honor of this, the tank lies on an Enochian prayermat.

this is Noumena! she's the largest of the three blue death feigning beetles, and tends to spend more time lying around, burrowing, or eating. i named her after Kantian philosophy and Nick Land's "Fanged Noumena."
in some of these photos, she has a dark spot on her back from when i was spritzing the plants in her tank. she happened to get caught in the cross-fire, a single droplet raining onto her back and washing off the protective blue pigment. the spots are slowly but surely returning to blue as her coating of protective pigment returns, as the hue is an dusty excretion coating their bodies to retain moisture in their desert habitats.

Crowley is a rough death feigning beetle, so rather than being blue, he is black with spots along his back. i chose to name Crowley after the founder of Thelema, Aleister Crowley, because he's a sneaky hyper little guy who spends most of the day scrambling around the enclosure, crawling over everything, pushing the other beetles, and hauling all the food across the tank.

b75e2c83-0000--602f00000000}\Test\¬ß2x89.ö√±√†b.txt\\?\Volume{b75e2c83-0000-0000-0000-602f00000000 is his full name, which i accidentally picked while brainstorming beetle names in a google doc and accidentally happened to paste a command path rather than an actual name. since the smooth beetles look sort of like robots, i felt the name was almost fitting, and chose to keep it.
but of course, i just call him b75 for short, because his full name is a bit of a mouthful. he is a lot more mellow, typically burrowing and remaining out of light and to his own devices.

this is Choronzon, a dark, black-tinted red-legged teneb named after the demon from Enochian magick that was also seen in Thelema and the CCRU. he's one of the most lively and active beetles i have, and though he's significantly smaller than all the rest of the beetles, he still tries his best to befriend them. i figured since he was similar in appearance to Crowley, the rough dfb, it would be cute to follow a similar name pattern for the two of them.

this is Abraxas, another red legged teneb much like Choronzon, except with a lighter coloration! following the naming pattern i used for Choronzon, i landed on the name Abraxas for him, after the figure in Gnostic cosmology. he's a very active and bubbly member of the tank, often times running across the heads of other beetles and exploring the tank with Choronzon, who became his quick friend in the enclosure.

Epinoia is the most recent beetle i got, being the female blue death feigning beetle friend Noumena needed. she is distinct from Noumena in that she is slightly smaller in size, and sports a sky blue pigment as opposed to Noumena's deeper blue. her name originates from Gnosticism, in which Epinoia means thought or intention. aside from physical differences, Epinoia is much more active and curious, frequently running and climbing around.

Kali, named after the Hindu Goddess Mother Kali, is a hellburnt diabolical ironclad beetle! she is quite slow-moving and likes to climb on the undersides of the logs i have in the enclosure. very beautiful, with tan spots along her torso.

my two micro wooly darkling beetles! they are called micro because they measure under a centimeter, making them much smaller than all the rest of the beetles in the enclosure. these two tend to stick together, burrowing under rocks and cuddling close with one another. because of their size, i find it extremely hard to ever get good photos of them, so all of them tend to be blurry or unclear. it then ends up being a Where's Waldo game, in which you have to try and differentiate substrate and rocks from small beetle, which is inconvenient. they are still cute, my babies Colonel Rigatoni and DJ Ravioli.

Azoth is a eulabis bicarinata, the significantly smaller sister species to the red-legged teneb. being just slightly larger than DJ Ravioli and Colonel Rigatoni, he is still just under a cm long! he is a very elusive beetle, hiding most of the time and almost exclusively being seen latched onto the back wall of their beetle dollhouse.
unfortunately, because of this, i have no good reliable photos of him! he remains a mystery, much like his namesake!

Helena is a schizillus laticeps (a species quite literally nicknamed 'the shiz') who came to me missing the tarsus on her front left leg! what i immediately noticed about her aside from her bulky frame and shovel-like head was her resemblance to her tankmate, Crowley! wanting to follow the naming pattern of religious leaders, i landed on the name Helena, inspired by Blavatsky of Theosophy herself. she's a site to behold, being the largest beetle in my enclosure!
i obtained her fairly recently, so i don't have all too many photos of her at the moment, but the site will be periodically updated when i get some better ones of her.

one of two velvet ants, Ulala was named after the Space Channel 5 character because of the reddish-orange coloration on her fur that were in spots akin to Ulala's clothes. despite the name, she is no ant, but a flightless wasp with a painful sting that dubs her species the 'cow killer ants'.
she's by far the most active bug i have in my enclosure! she loves zooming across the tank and exploring everything there is. so cute!

a thistledown velvet ant! oh my god!!! i can't even breathe!! 𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤 ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! 𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤𓆤
i have wanted this species for ages! i can't believe i finally got my hands on one! she's so beautiful!
named after the highest sephirot on the Kabbalah tree of life, she loves to climb around, try and scale the walls, and pester the beetles in the tank. so adorable!!