There’s a grain of truth in here, but not quite. One in every four or so (not quite, but we can roll with it regardless) identified species of animal is a beetle. Not one in every four animals, by population nor overall species.

The reasons for this is are many, but may include because beetles are big, easy to catch, agriculturally-significant, and are particularly easy to pin and study, dramatically boosting the count of beetle species we work with on an academic level (lending to higher identification rates). There are also just a shitload of beetle species, naturally.

Scientists estimate something closer to ~10 million species of animals, which would still make beetles a huge percentage of the species, but a far cry from 25%. If you looked at the total number (estimated) of individual animals, beetles are pretty insignificant.

Source: Studied entomology and love me some Coleoptera

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Mission Specialists.

They were given trivial tasks to perform to justify the title. It was in bad faith and should have rung alarm bells. But I anticipate for the luxury thrill-seeker, they may be accustomed to fancy titles for their trips, and didn’t even really think about it.

It’s the latter.

Emotionally oxymoronic?

speed racing charge

If you’re able to link them here (still learning) I will add them to the sidebar. “bugs” on lemmy.world will just be a mostly fluffy place for pretty pictures and quick IDs so it would be epic to be able to point people towards more scientific or specialized communities!

Should be fixed. The instructions specifically say include “either” that format or the one I used. Why did the one I chose (at random) not work, out of curiosity?