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), 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.

“We underlined that people under researcher identity came to this region and they sent these beetles abroad, made them [be] collected by local people and bought each beetle for 5 to 30 lira (2p-13p),” Nazim Sonmez, the association’s chairman, said.

“We are watching with great sorrow a struggle between the Japanese and the Germans and all we want to do is end the trade in our stag beetles. These stag beetles are significant as they have six antennae instead of four. They are being collected for economic reasons rather than research purposes. The stag beetle is under threat of extinction. It must be stopped.”

Collecting insects is an ancient summer pastime in Japan, but has been given new impetus by Mushiking. The arcade machines dispense a card with a picture of a particular insect and specifications of its fighting abilities. When the card is inserted back into the machine, its owner controls the beetle and can fight against the computer or friends with cards of their own.

Fighting for survival

- Lucanus cervus akbesianus is a larger subspecies of Lucanus cervus, the stag beetle widespread in continental Europe and Britain

- Males are between 60mm and 90mm (2.4in and 3.5in) long. Females, lacking the large mandibles characteristic of the species, grow up to 50mm. Male mandibles be up to 35mm long

- They are strongly territorial and males often fight to death, using their huge mandibles to grasp and crush opponents

- Many stag beetle populations in Europe are threatened by destruction of their habitat. In Britain they are protected Sources: WWF; stagbeetlehelpline.co.uk

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