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DESCRIPTION

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Adult beetle are shiny green or greenish blue, with legs and bases of the antennae reddish brown, and is 3.5 to 7 mm long. It is convex, straightsided, and noticeably "punctured."

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Importance: These beetles belong to a family that is principally known as predaceous, and it is not surprising that they feed on the larvae of blow flies and cheese skippers that infest meat. When redlegged ham beetles become very numerous, their numbers are reduced by cannibalism.

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This beetle was more important before refrigeration, when dried or smoked meats were more common. Larvae bore into meats, particularly the fat parts, do most of the damage; the adults are surface feeders. The redlegged ham beetle has also been recorded attacking cheese, bones, hides, drying carrion, copra, salt fish, herring, dried egg yolks, dried figs, "guano", bone meal, palm-nut kernels, and Egyptian mummies. Substances infested but not fed upon have been silk, baled cotton, and woolen goods.

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