A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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tiger beetle
A tiger beetle is a long-legged predatory beetle that hunts by running its prey down on open ground, often brilliantly metallic in green, blue, or bronze, with large bulging eyes and long curved jaws crossed in front of the head. It is among the fastest running insects known, and the larva lives in a vertical burrow with its head plugging the entrance, seizing anything that walks over it.
Etymology
The English name is for the hunting and the markings, and the same comparison was made in several languages. The family name in Latin is built on a word for a kind of beetle used in antiquity, and the group is closely related to the ground beetles, which hunt in the same way more slowly.
Notes
It runs so fast that it goes blind. At full speed, the eyes cannot gather enough light to form a usable image, so the beetle sprints, stops, reassesses, and sprints again, which is why the pursuit looks like a series of dashes rather than a chase. It also holds its antennae rigidly out in front while running, which appears to be how it avoids obstacles it cannot see.