Are Beetles Insects? A Detailed Explanation of the Beetle's Taxonomic Status

The beetle is a common insect in daily life. Some are good helpers to farmers, while others are pests that people find very annoying. So are beetles insects?

1. Are beetles insects?

Beetles are insects, and they are the largest group among insects. There are currently about 350,000 species, and they can be found almost everywhere from deserts to tropical rainforests. Among the common ones are the Japanese rhinoceros beetle, the scarab beetle, the weevil, the dung beetle, the ground beetle, the tiger beetle, the longhorn beetle, and the jewel beetle.

1. Japanese rhinoceros beetle

The male Japanese rhinoceros beetle has a horn-like projection on its head, which is a powerful weapon when fighting other males.

2. Scarab beetle

Scarab beetles are relatively large in size and bright in color, generally mostly green, glossy and textured, and many people use them to make ornaments.

3. Weevil

The weevil's ”nose“ accounts for half the length of its body, but in fact that is not a nose, but its ”mouth“.

4. Dung beetle

The dung beetle, also called the shi ke lang, is known as the ”earth scavenger“. They often use their spade-like horns to pile up fresh dung and roll it into balls. While patting the dung ball with their front legs, they walk with their hind legs, and the dung ball rolls bigger and bigger. The female also lays eggs on the dung ball.

5. Ground beetle

Ground beetles are not good at flying. Most of them are active on the ground surface, moving very agilely, or digging tunnels in the soil.

6. Tiger beetle

Tiger beetles, with many brilliant colors, are a kind of carnivorous insect and often forage for small insects on paths.

7. Longhorn beetle

There are many kinds of longhorn beetles. Their bodies are slender and cylindrical, and the antennae on their heads are long and thin. Their hind wings are well developed and very suitable for flight.

8. Jewel beetle

The surface of the jewel beetle's body has a lot of metallic luster, and most of them are unusually gorgeous in color.

2. What do beetles eat?

Beetles have a very wide range of diets, including carrion-feeding, feeding, parasitic, dung-feeding, and plant-feeding and predatory types. The plant-feeding ones are the most disliked by farmer uncles, because most of this group are major pests in agriculture and forestry. However, many of the predatory ones are beneficial to people, because the food of most of these insects is the pests among the plant-feeding ones. There are also some beetles with medicinal value.

One of them is a very combative insect, the stag beetle. Its adults like to eat leaves, sap, and honey, while the larvae like decaying matter and generally live at the roots of trees. The adults mostly come out at night and are phototactic. However, there are also species that are active during the day.

Because of its large size and strange, distinctive shape, it is favored and collected by most people, and some even keep it as a pet.

Longhorn beetles belong to the beetle group. They like to eat tree leaves or tender bark; leaf beetles eat tree leaves; dung beetles (shi ke lang) like to eat the decaying substances in human and livestock dung; ground beetles feed on earthworms, snails, and so on; ladybugs feed on aphids (some species feed by sucking plant sap and are pests). There is also a kind of aquatic beetle that mainly feeds on plankton. So different kinds of beetles also have different feeding habits.

Overall, beetles are insects, and they can be seen everywhere in daily life. For example, longhorn beetles, dung beetles, scarab beetles, and weevils are several common ones seen when growing crops.