Australian tiger beetle: No measured body size data available to draw at scale.
- · Grid units represent actual meters (m); human and animals are drawn to the exact same scale with original silhouette aspect ratios preserved.
- · When a size range is recorded (e.g. 1–1.6m), the lower bound is used for scale comparison.
- · Human silhouette: PhyloPic — NASA · Public Domain Mark 1.0
Australian tiger beetle
Rivacindela hudsoni (Australian tiger beetle · Australian tiger beetle)
Not Evaluated (NE) on the IUCN Red List yet.
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 💡 A speed of 2.4 m/s is about 8.6 km/h, roughly 1.7 times faster than a normal human walking pace (5 km/h) (Comparison).
- 💡 A review paper introduces this tiger beetle as an insect that runs across sand faster than the Namib Desert beetle (0.9–1.2 m/s).
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
Site-computed relative index from recorded values; not a formal scientific metric.
📖 1. Overview
The Australian tiger beetle is a flightless tiger beetle species (subgenus Rivacindela) living in saline habitats of Australia and is an extremely fast runner.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
Tiger beetles of this subgenus (Rivacindela) are characterized by 'flightlessness and rapid terrestrial locomotion' in the title of the paper by Kamoun & Hogenhout (1996).
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
A review paper cites it as running across sand at 2.4 m/s (almost 9 km/h), matching the average speed of South American lizards. The same review notes that while the Namib Desert beetle Onymacris plana running at 0.9–1.2 m/s is already remarkably fast for an insect, the Australian tiger beetle is an even faster example.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
No direct record connecting this species to Korea has been found.
📚 Sources & References
- • IUCN Red List: not evaluated (NE) — cross-checked with the Wikidata conservation-status entry
- • catalogueoflife.org — 4T6YR
- • wikidata.org — Q14281564
- • pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov — PMC13491553
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — Michael Day · CC0 1.0 (Related taxon silhouette — Carabidae)
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.