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Article: PREDACEOUS DIVING BEETLES.
- Article from:
- Animals
- Article date:
- July 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water ...
At the edge of the pond, where the mud is soft and warm, where tadpoles and newts dart among the flowering pickerelweed and frogs grin up from the shallows, an innocent-looking brown beetle, its Volkswagen shape neatly adapted for aquatic life, oars gently through the water with bladelike legs.
Don't be deceived, cautioned Mount Holyoke College zoologist Ann Haven Morgan. "Although no insect looks more gentle and satisfied," she observed in her 1930 Field Book of Pond and Streams, "none is more fierce and voracious."
In ponds, in pools, in the sidewaters of streams, legions of these ...