Video game = beetle extinction

With their shiny black shells, twitching legs and spiky black antlers, stag beetles are an unlikely item on a list of highly prized luxuries.

But now a rare breed is in danger of being hunted to extinction – not for use in oriental medicine but for the entertainment of six-year-old video game players in Japan.

According to environmentalists, a subspecies of stag beetle found only in the Amanos Mountains of southern Turkey is being wiped out to satisfy demand from Japan, where the insects are kept as children’s pets.

The craze has been driven by Mushiking (Insect King - King of the Beetle), a video arcade game in which small boys fight one another with digital stag beetles. A million beetles a year are being imported into Japan, where they are sold for as much as 40,000 yen (£170) each on internet auction sites.

The demand has created a class of Japanese and German beetle bounty hunter, who roam the dry hillsides of the Amanos in the guise of scientists in search of one of the most prized specimens of all – Lucanus cervus akbesianus.

A team of environmentalists from the Amanos Environmental Protection Association has submitted a report to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Ankara giving warning of an entomological holocaust.