A weevil is a type of small beetle with a distinctive long snout that sticks out from its head like a tiny elephant trunk. Weevils are pests that attack stored grains, flour, rice, and other dried foods. If you've ever opened a box of cereal or a bag of rice and found tiny bugs crawling around, they were probably weevils.

These insects drill into grains with their long snouts to lay eggs inside. When the eggs hatch, the larvae (young weevils) eat the grain from the inside out. Farmers and people who store food have battled weevils for thousands of years. The boll weevil, which attacks cotton plants, once devastated cotton crops across the American South in the early 1900s, causing enormous economic damage.

Weevils are surprisingly diverse: scientists have identified over 60,000 different species, making them one of the largest families of animals on Earth. While they're frustrating pests to humans, weevils are perfectly adapted to their lifestyle, using those remarkable snouts like precision tools to bore into seeds and plants.