#3245 · 🪲 beetles
Great Silver Water Beetle
🇳🇱 Grote spinnende watertor ·Hydrophilus piceus
🪲 Beetles 📍 in the Netherlands
9 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
what is it?
Hydrophilus piceus is a species of beetles in the family Hydrophilidae, the water scavenger beetles. This very large aquatic beetle is found in the Palearctic and is known by the common name great silver water beetle .
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- Spotted 133 times in the Netherlands on iNaturalist.
- 1,633 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
- Scientifically named in 1758 (268 years ago).
fact sheet
- English
- Great Silver Water Beetle
- Nederlands
- Grote spinnende watertor
- scientific name
- Hydrophilus piceus
- class
- Insecta
- order
- Coleoptera
- family
- Hydrophilidae
- sightings in NL
- 133
- sightings in Europe
- 951
- sightings worldwide
- 1,633
- GBIF records in NL
- 2,765
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
- named
- 1758
relatives· Hydrophilidae
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 447359, Wikidata Q941070, GBIF 5745349, Wikipedia (EN), Wikipedia (NL). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.