What type of creature is a Whirligig?
Whirligig beetle paired plumose tracheal gills on each of the first eight abdominal segments. Generally Gyrinids lay their eggs under water, attached to water plants, typically in rows. Like the adults, the larvae are active predators, largely benthic inhabitants of the stream bed and aquatic plants. They have long thoracic legs with paired claws. Their mandibles are curved, pointed, and pierced with a sucking canal. In this they resemble the larvae of many other predatory water beetles, such as the Dytiscidae. Mature larvae pupate in a cocoon that also is attached to water plants. Whirligig beetle The whirligig beetles are a family
Whirligig string-powered whirligig. A book published in Stuttgart in 1500 shows the Christ child in the margin with a string-powered whirligig. The Jan Provost attributed late sixteenth-century painting "Virgin and Child in a Landscape" clearly shows the Christ child holding a whirligig as well. The American version of the wind-driven whirligig probably did not originate with the immigrant population of the United Kingdom as whirligigs are mentioned in early American colonial times. How the wind-driven whirligig evolved in America is not fully known, though there are some markers. George Washington brought "whilagigs" home from the Revolutionary War. What type is unknown.