What type of creature is a cockchafer?

The cockchafer, colloquially called Maybug or doodlebug, is the name given to any of the European beetles of the genus Melolontha, in the family Scarabaeidae.

Once abundant throughout Europe and was a major pest. By the middle of the 20th century it had been nearly eradicated through extensive use of pesticides. However, since pest control was increasingly regulated in the 1980s, its numbers have started to grow again.

In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames.

Children since antiquity have played with cockchafers. In ancient Greece, boys caught the insect, tied a linen thread to its feet and set it free, amusing themselves to watch it fly in spirals. English boys in Victorian times played a very similar game by sticking a pin through one of its wings. Nikola Tesla recalls that as a child he made one of his first "inventions"—an "engine" made by harnessing four cockchafers in this fashion.

The name "cockchafer" derives from late 17th century usage of "cock" (in the sense of expressing size or vigour) + "chafer" which simply means beetle.