the.com/beetle
one in four animals is a beetle, making evolution's true favorite a tiny armored tank
means A beetle is an insect with hardened forewings that fold like a case over its body, belonging to the vast order Coleoptera, though the word also names a heavy mallet for driving stakes.
from From Old English bitula, meaning roughly 'the biter,' built on the verb bitan, 'to bite' — so the name simply marked the creature by its little jaws. The separate beetle that means a heavy mallet is a different Old English word, bietl, related to beat — two unrelated words that wandered into the same spelling.
- species count
- Over 400,000 known, a quarter of all animals
- bombardier trick
- Sprays boiling chemicals from its rear at enemies
- dung devotion
- Egyptians worshipped scarabs rolling balls of poop
- god joke
- Biologist quipped the creator had inordinate fondness for them
- strongman
- Some lift 1,000 times their own body weight
volkswagen beetle — most produced car in history with over 21 million sold since 1938
japanese beetle — metallic green invasive species devastating north american crops and lawns
goliath beetle — heaviest insect on earth, up to 3.5 inches long in central african rainforests