In the countryside, many people grow bamboo, but what makes people disgusted is that a pest often appears in the bamboo forest. The insects, which rely on nibbling on bamboo for their livelihood, tend to damage large amounts of bamboo, making it miserable for farmers who used to grow bamboo. Whenever this bug is seen, people usually trample them to death. But no one could have imagined that such a pest had now turned into a treasure, and a pound could even be sold for about 100 yuan.
So what's so special about this bug that it can sell for such a high price? Let's take a look!
This pest is the bamboo elephant, a "pest" that is expensive and even needs to be specially farmed.
Bamboo elephants, also known as bamboo weevils, bamboo shoot worms, etc., because the head of the adult worm has a mouth organ that can be moved like a straw, it looks like the nose of an elephant, hence the name. The bamboo elephant belongs to the arthropod phylum Weevilidae, a large beetle, generally adult bamboo elephants up to 35 mm long, with a diamond-shaped body and reddish-brown hard armor. It has two sharper, sickle-shaped developed forelimbs. It mainly harms bamboo shoots and relatively short bamboo.
Adults are very good at flying, often eating young bamboo or young shoots. Females often bite a small hole in the bamboo shoots and lay eggs in the hole, usually only one egg is laid in a hole, if two eggs are laid, after about 5 days the larva hatches, the two small bamboo elephants will compete with each other for food, the end result is that one is fatter and the other is thinner.
The larval stage of bamboo elephants is only about 16 days, and after the end of the larval stage, they will burrow into the ground to pupate for the winter. However, only half a month is extremely harmful to bamboo shoots, those bamboo shoots that have been eaten by bamboo elephant larvae are difficult to grow into bamboo, even if they grow up, they will be full of worm holes, and many times will lead to the rotting and death of bamboo shoots, which is very harmful to agriculture.
Therefore, in order to protect the bamboo forest, people will control the eggs, larvae, pupae and other periods of bamboo elephants. Especially in the past, when they saw bamboo elephants, they were often eager to slash them with a thousand knives. It is no exaggeration to say that whenever a bamboo elephant grows up, there will be a bamboo shoot withering, so when you are young, there will always be many small partners in the village, under the leadership of adults, flocks to the bamboo forest to catch bamboo elephants to play, whether adults or obese larvae, are rare playthings in childhood, so in the eyes of our friends, catching bamboo elephants to play is also considered to be "eliminating harm for the people".
Why would such a huge harm to the bamboo elephant turn into a valuable delicacy?
At that time, people found that bamboo elephants are a kind of insects that are only active in the bamboo forest all their lives, and their food sources are also very single, there are bamboo, so there is no need to worry about allergies or all kinds of unclean things, and bamboo elephants as a pure natural wild insect, its nutritional value is also very high, they have been eating bamboo all their lives, so the body is rich in various trace elements, such as amino acids, sugars, calcium, phosphorus, iron, carotene, and various vitamins, which are high-protein and nutrient-rich foods , so its taste is very delicious. In addition, according to chinese medicine records, bamboo elephants also have certain medicinal value, can be used to dispel rheumatism, anti-paralysis pain, etc., and bamboo elephants are often used in Traditional Chinese medicine to treat cold waist and leg pain, and both larvae and adults can be eaten. Therefore, people find that instead of trampling it to death, it is better to put it on the table and enjoy this wild game.
Therefore, the bamboo elephant has become a relatively widely popular game from the beginning of some people's consumption, and has also been loved by the public after promotion, but because the source of the bamboo elephant is very limited, it also leads to the number of bamboo elephants being relatively rare, and finally under the pursuit of people, the bamboo elephants have also changed from the first few pieces, more than a dozen pieces to the current hundreds of pieces of a pound, only a single bamboo elephant can be sold to 2 yuan a piece, a leap to become the darling of the market. However, even as the price of bamboo elephants continues to rise, bamboo elephants are still in short supply, so people have changed from the initial hunting of bamboo elephants to artificial breeding.
At present, most of the bamboo elephants seen on the market are already artificially farmed, and people will not use bamboo shoots for feeding, in order to reduce costs, people usually use bananas, elephant grass and papaya and other foods to feed. After all, relying only on wild bamboo elephants will not only become more expensive, but also the number will not be able to meet the needs of the market.