While it has a cute snoot, a rice weevil is a stowaway. It sneaks into your pantry as an egg that its mom laid inside a single grain of rice. Once it hatches, it turns your rice into its new home.
TRANSCRIPT
Something is after your rice. And it’s coming from inside the pantry. But how’d it get there?
The rice weevil is smaller than a grain of rice, but it could reduce your precious bounty to this. If you gave them eight months or so. They’re just like us: They love carbs. Their long snout, called a rostrum, is strong enough to pierce raw grains of rice.
Sharp mandibles at the tip cut through the hardest of grains. They gorge as they go. If they think they’re in danger, they’ll play dead. Don’t they totally blend in?
Now, I bet you didn’t think *this* was happening in your cupboard. To prepare for her babies, mom does what she knows best. She carves out a hole, then she turns around and lays an egg inside, down here. But sometimes she misses! An egg outside a grain of rice won’t survive, so she recycles it, by slurping it up. When she does lay her egg inside the rice, it grows into a larva.
