KATE BRADBURY

Deep in its labyrinth, a horned beast quietly works a kind of alchemy

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I MET MY FIRST MINOTAUR BEETLE recently.

It was a male and he was making his way across my friend’s field, which she manages for wildlife. I stopped and watched him for a few minutes. He walked with purpose and determination, and I admired how he seemed to know exactly where he was going. I congratulated my friend on her rewilding efforts and then dutifully added the sighting to the biological recording site, iRecord (irecord.org.uk).

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. He lived at the centre of the Labyrinth, and was eventually slain by Theseus, who navigated the Labyrinth with the help of a thread given to him by the King’s daughter, Ariadne.

His beetle namesake is so-called thanks to the male’s bull-like horns, which protrude from either side of his pronotum (the plate-like structure that covers the thorax), with a smaller one in between. The female has pointed stumps instead of horns, giving the illusion, perhaps, that she might one day grow horns of her own.