Posted by rob meechan on September 11, 2006

Q: my sister found a small littel insect in our garden in edinburgh scotland it looked like a a scorpion but had no stinger and no front claws the tail was the same width as the body and it came from under a stone it had stripes down its back running from side to side about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long could you tell me what she found

Habitat: suburban/yard

Habitat: suburban/yard

A: Oh my Rob, you've given me a really difficult question! There are so many different insects that identification from just a description is not easy, but I'll try. You gave me some good descriptive information, however, so I hope I can help you out.

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> From your description, I'm thinking it might be a rove beetle (family Staphylinidae). This large family of beetles (over 3,000 in the United States alone)is found in a wide range of habitats but often in places where there is decaying food, plants, or animals. This is a beetle, but it doesn't really look like one and therefore confuses many people. I found a site on the web that has quite a few pictures of rove beetles but it's possible your animal is not there so you need to see if any of these look "similar" rather than identical to your mystery animal. Check out www.pbase.com

If it seems that these beetles at this site do look very similar to what you found, then you can see if you can find out about Scottish rove beetles for your area to try and make a match. If you have a photo of your animal, this would make it much, much easier for me to help but let's see if this first step - my hunch - will work. Please feel free to get back to me on this if you come to a dead end. Thanks for asking and I hope this puts you on the trail of figuring this out.

John Wiessinger ( September 11, 2006)