The really nice beetles are expensive and I would not think kids would want to damage them," she said. I spoke to my friend Evangela Suzuki, who has experience of both pet beetles and small boys: together with her son, she kept both kinds of beetles at her home in Ibaraki Prefecture.ĭespite my concern for animal welfare (and yes, bugs are animals), I was disappointed when Suzuki said she'd only seen the beetle fights on Japanese TV herself, and didn't know of any kids that fought them. So when I wanted to know more about beetle-keeping, my first question, of course, was whether kids still have bug fights. If you've ever heard of these beetles it's probably in the context of these fights, since it's one of those weird only-in-Japan things that the media loves. Source: fuiīoth beetles can get to be two to three inches long and, with their big horns, you can imagine that the first small boy to stumble across them had the obvious thought: BUG FIGHT! So it's no surprise that this was the traditional way to play with pet beetles. They're named for their double horn, which again, made English speakers think of another animal and reminded the Japanese of a type of samurai helmet. The other is the kuwagata or Stag Beetle. The Japanese name means "helmet bug," apparently from the imagined resemblance to a samurai helmet. The English name obviously comes from their single giant horn. One is the kabutomushi, called Rhinoceros Beetle in English. But there's one big difference: in Japan there's a long tradition of keeping pet insects, especially two kinds of very large beetles. Americans and Japanese mostly have similar opinions about what makes a good pet – in both countries, cute and cuddly creatures like cats and dogs top the list.
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