Artificial breeding to protect nature
At the time when Ko Hsin-ping received his master’s degree, the card collecting and arcade game “Mushiking: The King of Beetles” was popular in Taiwan. At the height of the craze there were more than 80 insect shops operating on the island, and more and more members of the public were keeping insects. The number of insects that traders captured in the wild vastly increased. Seeing this situation, Ko, who was good at raising insects, decided to set up in business and breed them in large quantities, in order to reduce the harm to the environment.
“Commercial insect hunters can catch more than 100 stag beetles from the wild every day, but to breed stag beetles you catch just a few and bring them back to breed in captivity. However, you have to raise the larvae for a year before they are fully grown.” Ko explains that although this approach is more costly, it enables one to keep track of the insects’ growth history so as to ensure quality, and one can also clearly tell consumers how long each insect is likely still to live.
The main factors to pay attention to when raising insects are temperature, freshness of feed, container size, and level of disturbance. Ko Hsin-ping says vividly: “You only need to change beetles’ food once every month or two; if you change it every day you will terrify them, and if you carelessly startle them, they will think they are about to be eaten!” Also, the larger they grow at the larval stage, the bigger the adult insect will be. The process looks simple in theory, but it takes long years of insect breeding experience and knowledge to get on top of the essentials.
When we ask Ko what rare species he has bred, he struggles for a moment to choose a favorite from among his successes. “Have you ever seen a rainbow stag beetle? They’re incredibly beautiful, with iridescent wing cases, but they only live on hills in the tropical rainforest of northern Australia. Specimens used to be extremely rare, and could cost NT$50-60,000 each.” Later, through a Japanese entomologist he knew, Ko was able to lawfully obtain some larvae, and with painstaking care he bred large numbers of adult insects. The rainbow stag beetle, once considered a flagship species, has now become an entry-level pet insect.
Another of his successes, the satanas beetle (Dynastes satanas) is a rare protected species from the mountains of Bolivia. International movements of any specimens collected from the wild require licensing under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But the satanas beetles bred by Ko Hsin-ping are not subject to this restriction, thus facilitating international research exchanges on the species.
A satanas beetle. (courtesy of Ko Hsin-ping)