Animal
Goliath beetle
The Goliath beetle is one of the biggest beetles in the world. It has black and white stripes on its back and lives in African forests.
The Goliath beetle is one of the largest beetles on Earth, from about 5 to 11 centimeters long. It lives in the rainforests of central and eastern Africa, where the adults drink tree sap. Its huge grubs need protein-rich food to grow, and they may even hunt other small animals.
Goliathus goliatus, a flower chafer (Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae) of central and eastern African forests, is among the largest beetles, at 5 to 11 centimeters. Captive-rearing studies show its larvae need protein and may be partly predatory, which could help explain the genus's size. It has no IUCN assessment, but forest loss and the dried-insect trade threaten Goliath beetles.
Photo: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the Goliath beetle
The Goliath beetle is a giant beetle.
The biggest ones are longer than your hand is wide. It has black and white stripes on its front and a shiny shell on its back. It lives in forests in Africa.
Goliath beetles are among the biggest insects in the world. The Goliath beetle on this page, Goliathus goliatus, is about 5 to 11 centimeters long. The biggest males of its group are longer than 11 centimeters, longer than a grown-up's finger.
It has a black-and-white striped shield behind its head and hard, shiny wing cases on its back. Males have a Y-shaped horn on the head, and females have no horn. Goliath beetles are flower chafers, part of the big scarab beetle family.
Goliathus goliatus belongs to the Cetoniinae (flower chafers) of the scarab family Scarabaeidae. Vendl and Šípek (2016) describe Goliath beetles (genus Goliathus) as among the largest beetles in the world and the largest of their subfamily, with the largest males exceeding 11 centimeters; van Huis (2021) gives 5 to 11 centimeters for G. goliatus.
The genus is usually considered to contain five species. Males carry a Y-shaped horn on the head while females lack horns (Luiselli). The pronotum, the shield behind the head, is boldly striped in black and white, as the photo on this page shows.
Quick facts
- Group
- Invertebrate
- Length
- 5 to 11 cm
- Weight
- up to 100 g
Where it lives
Goliath beetles live in Africa.
They live in warm, wet forests with big trees. They fly up high near the treetops.
Goliath beetles live in the rainforests of Africa. This species, Goliathus goliatus, lives mainly in central Africa: in eastern Nigeria and Cameroon, in the Central African Republic, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and east to Uganda and Kenya. A small group was also found in a patch of forest in Benin, its farthest-west home.
Other kinds of Goliath beetles live farther west, in countries such as Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia. Goliath beetles need mature, humid forests with the right trees to feed on.
In the Bulletin of the French Entomological Society, Le Gall (2010) describes the typical form of G. goliatus as widespread in central Africa (Uganda, the western Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon and eastern Nigeria), with a population in Kenya at its eastern end, and reports a population in a forest relic at Pobè in southern Benin, the first record west of the Niger delta. Eastern Congo and Tanzania hold G. orientalis, treated by some authors as a subspecies of G. goliatus. Ecologist Luca Luiselli also names forests in South Sudan and Rwanda as refuges, but those are not shaded without a documented record.
The map shades the nine countries Le Gall names. GBIF records from Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire are not shaded: those forests are home to other Goliathus species (such as G. regius and G. cacicus). Vendl and Šípek note that the genus inhabits tropical forests and savannas of tropical and subtropical Africa.
Continent
Did you know?
Goliath grubs need meaty food to grow.
In one study, no Goliath grub fed without protein managed to turn into a pupa, but most well-fed grubs did.
None of 11 protein-starved larvae pupated, versus 20 of 23 fully nourished larvae (87 percent) (Vendl and Šípek 2016).
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Humid forests of central Africa: eastern Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the western Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, with populations in Kenya at the eastern end and in a forest relic in southern Benin at the western end. It lives only in suitable forest within each country shown.
Places: Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Central African Rep. and 1 more places.
Source: https://lasef.org/wp-content/uploads/BSEF/115-1/4-1464_Le_Gall.pdf · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in DR Congo, Cameroon, Congo, Benin, Central African Rep., Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda, Eq. Guinea and 4 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
What it eats
Grown-up Goliath beetles drink sweet sap that oozes from trees.
The babies, called grubs, live in the ground. They need lots of protein to grow big.
Adult Goliath beetles feed on sap, the sugary liquid that oozes from trees. Researchers in West Africa found them by watching trees that were leaking sap, where the beetles feed during the daytime.
The grubs are different. Most flower chafer grubs eat rotting plants, but Goliath grubs also need protein. Scientists think they may scavenge on meat and even hunt other small animals. When people raise them, they feed them pellets of pet food.
Luiselli reports that adult Goliathus feed on tree sap during the day, on only a few tree species in mature rainforest; his team located beetles by tracking sap-oozing trees. Adult diet details for G. goliatus specifically are not documented in the other sources used here.
Larval nutrition is unusual for a cetoniine. Vendl and Šípek (2016) reared G. goliatus on leaf litter and compost with or without protein pellets (soft-moist dog food): no larva denied protein pupated, against 87 percent of fully fed larvae. Together with larval traits such as mandible shape and well-developed stemmata, this led them to conclude that the genus may have shifted from pure saprophagy to obligatory predation, which may help explain its enormous size. Wu and Shelomi (2026) found that low-protein diets reduced G. goliatus growth.
Did you know?
Goliath beetle grubs can weigh as much as a small apple.
Goliath beetle grubs have been reported to weigh up to about 100 grams.
Vendl and Šípek (2016) cite commonly reported larval masses of up to 100 grams in large males and 50 in females.
An armored giant
The Goliath beetle has a hard shell, like armor.
It has six strong legs with hooked claws. Under its hard wing cases, it has wings for flying.
Like all beetles, the Goliath beetle has a hard outer skeleton, and its front wings are hardened into wing cases called elytra. These protect the thin flying wings folded underneath. In this species the wing cases are a shiny reddish brown.
Its six long legs end in hooked claws. The white parts of its pattern are made of tiny white scales, and scientists found that these scales reflect sunlight and help the beetle stay cooler.
The body follows the beetle plan: head, a large pronotum, and elytra (hardened forewings) covering membranous hindwings; three pairs of legs end in strong tarsal claws. In this specimen the elytra are reddish brown and the pronotum is striped black and white.
Xie and colleagues (2019) found that the white scales of G. goliatus have a shell and hollow-cylinder structure that strongly reflects visible light from all angles and, in the mid-infrared, acts as an anti-reflective layer that raises emissivity, so the elytra radiate heat away. Together these effects lowered the beetles' temperature by as much as about 7.8°C in air under direct sunlight.
Egg, grub, pupa, beetle
A Goliath beetle starts as a tiny egg.
The egg hatches into a big, hungry grub. The grub grows and grows, then makes a little room and turns into a pupa. Out comes a beetle! This change is called metamorphosis.
Goliath beetles go through complete metamorphosis: egg, larva (grub), pupa and adult. Nobody has studied how the grubs grow in the wild, so what we know comes from beetles raised by people.
The grubs grow through three stages, called instars, and become enormous: the final-stage grubs studied were 58 to 150 millimeters long, and breeders report grubs of up to 100 grams. Well-fed grubs were ready to pupate in less than 200 days. They built small chambers, called pupal cells, to change into adults.
Development is holometabolous, with three larval instars. Vendl and Šípek (2016) note that nothing is known of development under natural conditions; their data come from larvae bred from beetles imported from Cameroon. Third-instar larvae measured 58 to 150 millimeters, and total larval development of fully nourished larvae took 193 ± 5 days, after which they built pupal cells.
Their laboratory larvae stayed lighter than the commonly reported maximum (up to 100 grams in large males and 50 in females). Larvae were kept apart to prevent cannibalism, and some protein-starved larvae survived 250 days into the third instar, resuming growth and even pupating once fed.
Life in the treetops
Goliath beetles fly through the treetops in the morning.
They find trees with sweet, dripping sap and drink it in the daytime.
Adult Goliath beetles spend much of their lives high in the rainforest. Researchers in West Africa noticed which treetops the beetles flew through every morning, and found them feeding on sap during the day.
The grubs live hidden lives, and little is known about them in the wild. Because they may eat meat as well as plants, scientists think they help move nutrients around the forest.
Luiselli's team located adults at sap-oozing trees and observed the treetops they flew through each morning, then collected, measured and released them at night. He notes that, because the larvae are omnivorous and likely scavenge on meat as well as plant debris, they probably play a role in cycling nutrients through the forest, and that abundant Goliath beetles indicate a forest in good condition.
Did you know?
The beetle's white stripes help keep it cool.
The white scales on a Goliath beetle reflect sunlight and help it lose heat, keeping it up to about 7.8°C cooler.
Shell and hollow-cylinder scale structures give broadband reflection of visible light and high mid-infrared emissivity (Xie et al. 2019).
Forests, cocoa and collectors
Goliath beetles need big, healthy forests.
Some forests are being cut down for farms. People are working to protect the trees where the beetles live.
Goliath beetles need old, humid forests. In West Africa, forests have been cleared for cocoa farms and many beetles have been caught and sold: one relative is now close to disappearing, and another has lost much of its forest. The species on this page is still found across a wide area, but it is also caught and sold as a dried specimen, sometimes for hundreds of dollars.
Scientists say the best way to help is to protect the forests and the special trees the beetles feed on, working with local communities. They do not recommend that people breed Goliath beetles at home to save them.
Goliathus goliatus has no IUCN Red List assessment. Luiselli reports that it is still sold in the hundreds on the dried-insect market, mainly from southwestern Cameroon and to a lesser extent Kenya and Uganda, and writes that it is not yet endangered, though nearly so; van Huis (2021) notes prices of USD 100 to 3,000. Deforestation, land conversion, mining and climate change threaten Goliath beetles generally.
For two West African relatives, Luiselli's team estimated that about 80 percent of the G. cacicus population in Côte d'Ivoire has been lost with forest cleared for cocoa, and that G. regius has lost about 40 percent of its habitat. He recommends protecting forests and the trees beetles gather on, involving community elders, certified forests that allow limited sustainable harvest, and an action plan, and states there is no scientific support for captive breeding as a way to save the beetles.
Amazing facts
-
Goliath beetle grubs can weigh as much as a small apple.
Goliath beetle grubs have been reported to weigh up to about 100 grams.
Vendl and Šípek (2016) cite commonly reported larval masses of up to 100 grams in large males and 50 in females.
-
The beetle's white stripes help keep it cool.
The white scales on a Goliath beetle reflect sunlight and help it lose heat, keeping it up to about 7.8°C cooler.
Shell and hollow-cylinder scale structures give broadband reflection of visible light and high mid-infrared emissivity (Xie et al. 2019).
-
Goliath grubs need meaty food to grow.
In one study, no Goliath grub fed without protein managed to turn into a pupa, but most well-fed grubs did.
None of 11 protein-starved larvae pupated, versus 20 of 23 fully nourished larvae (87 percent) (Vendl and Šípek 2016).
Words to know
- elytra
- a beetle's hard front wings, which cover and protect the flying wings
- pronotum
- the hard shield behind an insect's head
- grub
- the soft, worm-like larva of a beetle
- metamorphosis
- the big change in body shape from larva to adult
- sap
- the sugary liquid inside a tree
- specimen
- an animal kept in a museum collection for study
Discovery challenge
-
What do grown-up Goliath beetles drink?
What do adult Goliath beetles feed on?
On what do adult Goliathus feed, according to field researchers?
- Tree sap
- Seawater
- Milk
Show the answer
Tree sap
They drink sweet sap from trees.
Adults feed on sap oozing from trees, during the daytime.
Sap from a few tree species in mature rainforest (Luiselli).
-
What do Goliath grubs need to grow big?
What did scientists find Goliath grubs need to grow and change into adults?
What did captive-rearing experiments show about Goliathus larval nutrition?
- Protein-rich food
- Only sunlight
- Only clean water
Show the answer
Protein-rich food
They need meaty, protein-rich food.
Grubs given protein grew and pupated; grubs without protein never pupated.
Protein is obligatory: 0 of 11 starved larvae pupated, versus 87 percent of fully nourished larvae.
-
What is the right order for a beetle growing up?
What are the stages of a Goliath beetle's life cycle, in order?
Which sequence describes Goliath beetle development?
- Egg, grub, pupa, beetle
- Beetle, egg, pupa, grub
- Grub, beetle, egg, pupa
Show the answer
Egg, grub, pupa, beetle
Egg, then grub, then pupa, then beetle!
It goes through complete metamorphosis: egg, larva (grub), pupa, adult.
Holometabolous: egg, three larval instars, pupa in a pupal cell, adult.
-
How do the white stripes help the beetle?
How do the Goliath beetle's white scales help it?
What thermal effect did Xie and colleagues measure for the white scales?
- They help it stay cool
- They help it swim
- They make it glow at night
Show the answer
They help it stay cool
They help the beetle stay cool in the sun.
They reflect sunlight and help the beetle lose heat, keeping it up to about 7.8°C cooler.
Broadband reflection plus raised mid-infrared emissivity cooled the beetles by up to about 7.8°C in air.
Places where you might see it
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Watch
Country
Cameroon
Cameroon sits where western and central Africa meet. In the south are thick rainforests full of monkeys and apes, by the coast rises Mount Cameroon, an active volcano, and in the north are dry savanna plains. About 29.9 million people lived there in 2025, and French and English are both official languages.
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Watch
Country
Uganda
Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa, on the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest freshwater lake. The Victoria Nile flows out of the lake here, snowy mountains rise in the west, and its forests are home to mountain gorillas and chimpanzees. About 51.4 million people lived there in 2025.
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Watch
Country
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DR Congo, is the second-largest country in Africa. The mighty Congo River curves through its rainforests, volcanoes rise in the east, and its capital, Kinshasa, is a center of music, fashion and popular culture.
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Cameroon
Cameroon sits where western and central Africa meet. In the south are thick rainforests full of monkeys and apes, by the coast rises Mount Cameroon, an active volcano, and in the north are dry savanna plains. About 29.9 million people lived there in 2025, and French and English are both official languages.
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Uganda
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Democratic Republic of the Congo
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Describe the parts of a beetle's body, including elytra and pronotum.
- Put the stages of complete metamorphosis in order using the Goliath beetle.
- Explain how an experiment showed that Goliath grubs need protein.
- Discuss how forest loss and wildlife trade affect insects.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- How could scientists find out what a grub needs to eat? What was the 'test' in the Goliath experiment?
- Why might white stripes be useful for a beetle that lives in hot places?
- Why do you think scientists say breeding Goliath beetles at home will not save them?
Try at home or in class
- Put a white card and a black card in the sun for 10 minutes, then feel which is cooler (an adult can help).
- Measure 11 centimeters on a ruler and hold it against your hand to see how big the largest Goliath beetles are.
Key vocabulary: elytra, pronotum, grub, metamorphosis, sap, specimen
Where these facts come from
- Affinités biogéographiques des Insectes du Dahomey gap: présence d'une population de Goliathus goliatus au Bénin (Le Gall, 2010) , Bulletin de la Société entomologique de France 115(1)
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Immature stages of giants: morphology and growth characteristics of Goliathus larvae indicate a predatory way of life (Vendl and Šípek, 2016) , ZooKeys (full text via Europe PMC)
- World's largest insect faces extinction: how to save two species of Africa's giant Goliath beetle (Luca Luiselli, The Conversation) , Down To Earth (republished from The Conversation)
- Cultural significance of beetles in sub-Saharan Africa (van Huis, 2021) , Insects (full text via Europe PMC)
- Broadband omnidirectional light reflection and radiative heat dissipation in white beetles Goliathus goliatus (Xie et al., 2019) , Soft Matter (PubMed abstract)
- Effect of protein supplementation on the gut microbiome of omnivorous and herbivorous Goliath beetles (Wu and Shelomi, 2026) , Insects (PubMed abstract)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 27, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.