Speed demon

Many British ground beetles – and there are a lot of them, about 350 species – are essentially black or brown, sometimes with a metallic sheen. But here’s a stunning exception. In Diary of a Young Naturalist, Dara McAnulty describes how this jewel-like, massive-jawed, goggle-eyed predator “javelins forwards”. Sunny patches of bare, dusty earth are all the beetle needs for hunting, so it thrives on ex-industrial sites and in other abandoned, scruffy corners of cities. Further afield, check sandy paths and heaths. The larvae lurk in killing pits, like ant-lions.

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