Longhorn beetle discovery: ‘Hairy poo’ unmasked as Australia’s newest creepy crawly found on the Gold Coast

A Queensland camper has made a momentous scientific discovery after taking a closer look at a hairy poo.

Entomologist James Tweed was chilling out in the lush rainforest that sits behind the Gold Coast’s busy beaches a while back.

As he wandered off to clean his teeth, his gaze fell upon what he thought was a blob of bird poo, turning furry with mould in the humidity.

But it turned out to be Australia’s newest creepy-crawly – a longhorn beetle so distinct from its relatives that it’s not just a new species, but a whole new genus.

The University of Queensland researcher said Australia has about 1600 described species of longhorn beetles but his discovery is the only one with a dense coat of long, white hairs.

“That’s not a feature that we really see in any of the other Australian longhorn beetles. That striking white hair,” he said.

The discovery was made in 2021 near the Binna Burra Lodge in the Lamington National Park. But it has only just been detailed in a paper published in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.

Mr Tweed said efforts have been made to find more of the beetles but so far the sole specimen is the one he found sitting on a lomandra leaf.

That has ruled out any attempt to dissect it and find out more of the creature’s secrets.

There is one early theory about the purpose of its grand white coat – it could be a trick to help it avoid being eaten.

“To potentially prove these theories we have to do a lot more work but the main theory we have is that these long white hairs may mimic an insect that’s been killed by a fungus,” Mr Tweed said.

“There’s a lot of fungi species out there that reproduce by infecting an insect and killing them.