“They Eat The Jungle” — The “Disgusting” Australian Survival Skills That Shocked US Navy SEALs

The Beetle, the Doctrine, and the Jungle: How the Australians Rewrote the Rules of Survival

Prologue: The Beetle

February 2003, Tully, Far North Queensland.

The jungle was alive with the sounds of rain tapping on palm fronds and the distant call of a kookaburra. It was the kind of place that didn’t just test you; it tried to break you. A US Navy SEAL instructor, a man who’d survived Hell Week and firefights in Afghanistan, watched in disbelief as an Australian SAS operator calmly bit the head off a live beetle—the size of a walnut—chewed, and swallowed. No water. No hesitation.

The SEAL turned away, his stomach rebelling. He was supposed to be unbreakable, “harder than coffin nails,” but the sight made him retch into the undergrowth. The Australian didn’t flinch, didn’t gloat. He just kept moving, scanning the canopy, chewing.

Three days later, that same SEAL was begging the Australian to teach him which insects were edible and which would shut down his kidneys. In the jungle, the difference between those two was the difference between walking out and being carried out.

This was not a reality show. There were no camera crews, no safety nets, no emergency extractions. Just two teams—one American, one Australian—seventeen kilometers behind notional enemy lines, no resupply, no radio contact, and a choice: eat what crawls, or eat nothing at all.

Chapter One: The Doctrine Divide

The Americans arrived at Tully with 60-pound rucksacks stuffed with two weeks of freeze-dried meals, water purification tablets, Gore-Tex rain gear, and enough backup equipment to open a sporting goods store. Their doctrine was clear: prepare for every contingency, control every variable.

The Australians showed up with knives and empty packs.

The SEAL team leader, Commander Eric Reigns—17 years of service, combat in Afghanistan and the Philippines, a reputation for cool under fire—asked the obvious question: “Where’s your food?”

The Australian instructor, Warrant Officer Collins, grinned. “We’re standing on it.”

The SEALs laughed. Six hours later, they realized he wasn’t joking.

The mission was a 12-day reconnaissance exercise through some of the harshest rainforest on earth—60 kilometers north through terrain so broken that the elevation changed 300 meters every two kilometers. The Americans and Australians would move as separate teams, reach the same objective, and compare notes.

The difference wasn’t just in their equipment; it was in their philosophy. The Americans came from a military culture that trusted in logistics, air superiority, and the promise that supplies would always arrive. The Australians came from a culture that expected failure—a military that couldn’t afford massive logistics chains, that operated in small units over vast distances, and that taught every soldier to be self-sufficient.

For the Australians, the jungle wasn’t an obstacle. It was a resource.

Chapter Two: The First Days

On day one, both teams moved at about the same pace. The Americans, with their heavy packs, managed 14 kilometers. They set up camp, ate freeze-dried stroganoff, and slept in waterproof bivvy bags. The Australians covered the same distance, carrying half the weight. They ate grubs from rotting logs, wild yams roasted over smokeless fires, and palm hearts cut from young trees. They slept on platforms built from bamboo, under shelters woven from palm fronds.

It rained four inches that night. The Americans stayed dry, but woke up as heavy as when they’d gone to sleep. The Australians woke up lighter. The math was simple: the Americans had 14 days of food; the Australians had as many days as they could find food.

By day three, this wasn’t academic. The Americans were burning 6,000 calories a day, their rations provided barely half that. The Australians, grazing constantly on whatever the jungle offered, were breaking even.

The Americans noticed. They started asking questions.

Chapter Three: The Grub Lesson

At midday on day three, Collins called both teams together. The SEALs were exhausted, soaked, and dealing with the first signs of foot rot. Collins held up a fat white grub the size of a thumb.

“This is a witchetty grub,” he said. “Larva of the longhorn beetle. One of these has more protein than a McDonald’s hamburger and more fat than a tablespoon of peanut butter. There are about 4,000 within 50 meters of where we’re sitting.”

He bit it in half, chewed, swallowed. The Americans stared.

“In this environment, you need protein and fat. MREs don’t give you enough. You’ll burn through your glycogen stores in three days, then you’ll start cannibalizing muscle mass. I can see it happening already. You’re getting weaker. I’m getting stronger. The difference is what we’re eating.”

He offered the other half. No one moved. Collins shrugged and ate it himself.

He spent the next hour teaching what the Australian Army had codified over sixty years: the science of eating the jungle. The rainforest was a buffet—if you knew what to eat. Insects, grubs, worms, snails, lizards, frogs, fish, eggs, roots, tubers, fruits, nuts, leaves, bark, sap. The difference between nutrition and poison was knowledge, and the Australians had turned that knowledge into doctrine.

They started with insects—not as a last resort, but as a primary food source. A single palm weevil larva contained 14 grams of protein and 9 grams of fat. Twenty minutes of work could yield the equivalent of a pound of steak.

The Americans had been taught that insects were emergency food. The Australians had been taught that insects were a strategic advantage.

One SEAL, Garcia, who’d grown up fishing in Florida, finally tried one. “Tastes like chicken fat,” he said.

“Close,” Collins replied. “Tastes like protein and fat. Which is what your body needs.”

By the end of the break, most of the Americans had tried at least one grub. Not out of enthusiasm, but calculation. They could feel themselves getting weaker, and they could see the Australians maintaining strength.

Chapter Four: The Plant Code

The education continued. Collins taught plant identification. The key was specifics: wild yams, palm hearts, ginger, tree ferns, edible fungi. The Australians had spent decades cataloging exactly what was safe and how to prepare it.

The jungle was thick with protein—if you knew where to look. Freshwater crayfish in streams, lizards on branches, frogs in rain pools, bird eggs in nests, fish in pools. The Australians caught food as they moved, ate while they patrolled.

By day five, they’d consumed more protein than the Americans, while carrying a fraction of the weight. The Americans started copying them. Commander Reigns still wouldn’t eat insects, but he started harvesting palm hearts and catching crayfish.

Chapter Five: The Wait-a-While

On day six, they hit the worst terrain yet—a ravine system choked with “wait-a-while” vines, named for their fishhook thorns. The Americans struggled, their heavy packs catching on every vine. The Australians moved through like ghosts—lighter, more disciplined, and with another advantage: they’d eaten the young shoots of those very vines the day before.

That night, Collins delivered the final lesson.

“You’re thinking of the jungle as an obstacle,” he said. “And you’re right—it is. But it’s also trying to feed you. The same plant that cuts you open has edible shoots. The same stream that gives you dysentery has edible fish. The same log that harbors venomous spiders has grubs. The jungle is both. Your job is to take what it offers and avoid what it threatens. The only way to do that is knowledge.”

He showed them his notebook—pages warped from humidity, filled with sketches and notes. “Seventy-three plants, twenty-six insects, fourteen reptiles and amphibians, eight fish species. It took forty years to compile this. We learned from locals, from trackers, from trial and error. This knowledge is written in blood, in dysentery, in guys who got it wrong. But now it’s doctrine.”

He looked at Reigns. “You came here with fourteen days of food. I came here with infinite days—because I know how to read the environment.”

Chapter Six: The Water Test

As the days wore on, the Americans’ rations dwindled. Their bodies started cannibalizing muscle. On day seven, Reigns ate his first beetle—not because he wanted to, but because he had to. The choice was simple: eat the environment or fail the mission.

The Australians drank water straight from vines—specifically, water vines, which stored clean, drinkable water in their hollow centers. Collins taught them which vines were safe, which held poison, and which held nothing. The Americans, used to purifying every drop, began to follow suit. By day nine, everyone was drinking from vines, because it worked, because it was faster, because it let them move lighter and operate longer.

Chapter Seven: The Aftermath

On day twelve, both teams reached their objective—a simulated enemy position overlooking the Tully River. The Americans arrived exhausted, rations gone, feet destroyed, morale low. They’d lost an average of eleven pounds each. The Australians arrived strong, having lost only four pounds each—normal for extended field operations.

Reigns wrote a seventeen-page after-action report. The first line: “We have been doing this wrong.”

The report recommended a complete overhaul of American jungle survival training: specific species knowledge, continuous grazing over periodic meals, eating insects as primary protein, sourcing water from vines, moving light and resupplying from the environment. Within six months, Collins was teaching at Fort Bragg. Within a year, the Army Ranger School’s jungle phase had incorporated Australian doctrine. Within two years, every American special operations course included modules on eating insects, identifying edible plants, and sourcing water from vines.

Chapter Eight: The Doctrine Spreads

The SEALs who’d trained at Tully became evangelists. They taught other teams, ran their own courses in swamps and forests across the South, teaching candidates to eat crickets and drink from wild grape vines. Garcia, the first SEAL to eat a grub, later operated in the Philippines for eighteen days with no resupply, living off the jungle the entire time. He credited the Tully training with mission success.

The cultural shift was profound. American special operations had always prided itself on being the best. In the jungle, they weren’t. The Australians were. The gap wasn’t toughness or equipment. It was knowledge.

Chapter Nine: The Legacy

Collins retired in 2009 with the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to military training. His final posting was as chief instructor at the Jungle Training Wing at Tully, where he taught Australians and soldiers from seventeen countries. He died in 2019. His obituary was three paragraphs. It didn’t mention that he’d changed how the world’s most powerful military thought about jungle warfare.

The doctrine lives on. Modern Australian SAS selection includes a jungle survival phase: candidates are given knives and empty packs and told to live for ten days. No food, no resupply, just knowledge. Pass rate: 40%. The men who pass aren’t tougher, they’re better educated. They know their plants, their insects, which vines hold water, which hold poison.

The notebook Collins showed the SEALs in 2003 is now 247 pages—digital, illustrated, and part of the Australian Army’s manual. The Americans adopted portions of it. Now, American jungle operations schools teach insect consumption as standard, and Marine Corps and Navy SEAL candidates learn to source water from vines and catch protein from streams.

Epilogue: The Philosophy

The difference remains. American soldiers still see jungle food as emergency rations. Australian soldiers see it as operational capability. That difference is subtle, but it’s the gap between “I can survive if I have to” and “I can thrive because I choose to.”

The Australians proved that in the jungle, knowledge weighs nothing and provides everything. The Americans learned it. Soldiers from both countries are more effective because a SEAL watched an Australian eat a beetle and realized he didn’t understand the environment as well as he thought.

Three days later, that same SEAL was eating beetles himself—not because he wanted to, but because the mission required it. Because staying combat effective mattered more than comfort. Because what seemed disgusting was actually tactical advantage.

That shift—from disgust to doctrine—is where military culture changes. Where “I would never eat that” becomes “I need to learn which ones are safe.” The Australians taught that shift. They’re still teaching it at Tully, at exchange programs, at joint training exercises where Americans show up with MREs and leave knowing how to harvest grubs.

The knowledge spreads. It gets tested, refined, and proven in operations where resupply fails and survival depends on remembering which vine holds water, where missions succeed because teams move light enough to reach the objective while the enemy expects them to fail.

This is what Collins meant when he said, “The jungle provides if you know how to ask.” The asking is knowledge. The providing is survival.

The gap between the two is training, doctrine, and the willingness to eat what makes your stomach turn until it becomes normal. The Australians made it normal. The Americans are still learning. But the gap is closing.

And in the heart of the jungle, that makes all the difference.