Species of these little critters are found pretty much everywhere. They have big eyes and long legs and crazy big jaws.
But no stripes :-(.
They are beatles, and I guess the hunter with big jaw thing won them the tiger moniker.
Well not in a "faster than a speeding train" kind of way, but in a "for a little dude" kind of way.
They can run at speeds of up to 8km/h - speeds we can do as a slowish jog, or a pretty fast speed walk. But these dudes ARE LITTLE and that is startlingly fast for a little, buggy thing.
Lets put it another way, it can cover 120 of its own body lengths in one second.. Usain Bolt is in the 5 body lengths/second range. If the lightning bolt ran at those body length speeds he would reach speeds of greater than 750 km/h ( his fastest speed to date is about 37 km/h)
As I said - fast.
Now imagine doing this with your eyes closed...
Tiger beetles have big eyes. Which is great for sighting its prey ("all the better for seeing you with little red riding-hood"). , but as soon as it starts sprinting - everything becomes a blur.
How about that -it's superfast and with great eyes but can't use both things at once! If only it had evolved large enough a brain to have a sense of irony....
"You can run, but then everybody can hide"
Luckily it runs so fast most prey can't dodge out of the way in time before they become insect enchilada or a bug-eyed burrito. If they do, then it does a "stop-start" chase, looking around and reorienting itself before each little dash.
But life is more than dinner on or of the fly. There are twigs and pebbles out there ready for a head on sightless collision with a stripe-less misnamed beetle.
Scientists recently published a study showing how they avoid such collisions. As they run blindly (literally) after their prey, they hold their antennae straight out in front of them, if they touch an obstacle, they angle their bodies upwards so that they get lifted up, but not badly damaged by the collision (almost body-surfing the pebble).
Read more on this with one of may favourite science writers Ed Yong here.
Or read the abstract by the scientists who did the latest study here