My fifth grade teacher wanted to teach us about doodle bugs so she made a terrarium with a doodle bug a stick and some ants.

The doodle bug ate the ants. Then it hatched out and grew wings and climbed up the stick. Then the ants climbed up the stick and ate the doodle bug fly.

Best science lesson ever. The cycle of life…

Doodle bugs are what we called ant lions BTW. An ant lion is the only insect whose adult form is named for its larval stage. I read that somewhere.

Some doodle bug traps I found in the Texas Hill Country. I don’t know if one of them managed to eat that millipede or not.

I grew up in the country and one thing you learned as a kid was how to catch a doodle bug. Just get under them and let the sand run through your fingers and there it’ll be, scooting around in your hand in a circle. It kinda tickled.

There wasn’t much you could do next other than let them go, so they could make another trap. We just wanted to know what they looked like.

I could tell doodlebugs inspired the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi. Which is why I got so annoyed when George Lucas added CGI tentacles in the subsequent release. Doodlebugs do just fine without tentacles.

Now there are videos explaining the anatomy and life cycle of the tentacled version which seems like the movie review version of a bacronym. You know, like the USA PATRIOT Act (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”).