Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz published the observation in the Journal of the Australian Entomological Society: male Julodimorpha bakewelli swarmed discarded brown stubby bottles whose color, gloss and bumpy base resembled a super-sized female, and refused to leave even as ants ate them. The bottles' design was later changed. The case became the textbook example of a supernormal stimulus, a concept from Tinbergen's The Study of Instinct (1951).
The folk tier is a bar anecdote: dumb beetle, dumb lust, ha ha. The telling stops before the mirror.
Deirdre Barrett's Supernormal Stimuli (2010) drew the line Hoffman draws: the beetle's eyes are honest instruments tuned to cues, and the bottle is a cue amplified past anything nature offers. Junk food, infinite scroll and outrage feeds are human stubbies. The interface serves whoever shapes the cue.
If a beetle can prefer the advertisement to the world, what exactly do you think advertising is for?