Richard Jones takes a look at the contenders for the title of Britain’s biggest flying insect <\/p>
Despite the broad wingspans of swallowtails and hawkmoths, Britain’s largest flying insect is likely a beetle<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p> There are three contenders for the title of Britain’s biggest flying insect: the stag beetle<\/a>, great silver diving beetle and sawyer beetle.<\/p> These large, impressive insects all make a clockwork model- aeroplane buzz when they take to the air of a warm summer evening, and the approach of any is enough to make you duck.<\/p> Beetles are renowned for their diversity, and one of their secrets is the ability to fold their delicate wings, origami-style, under tough, protective wingcases so they can push out of sight into the herbage, among the root thatch or under logs. <\/p> Though each is about 45-55mm long in the body, once the spring-loaded wings are unfolded, they can have a span approaching 130mm. Large dragonflies<\/a> also reach this, but are famously slim and slight in comparison.<\/p> Richard Jones takes a look at the contenders for the title of Britain’s biggest flying insect <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":40071,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm.jpg",2121,1414,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/09\/what-is-britains-largest-flying-insect-heres-a-clue-it-has-an-impressive-wingspan-of-130mm-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Richard Jones takes a look at the contenders for the title of Britain's biggest flying insect","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/40070"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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