Now that’s a bug—Really!

Yes, really. Whoever first nicknamed the VW beetle a bug was obviously not an entomologist. Beetles are beetles; bugs are bugs; never the twain shall meet. Actually, the car looks more like a beetle, like a ladybug, which is a beetle. So who were the better entomologists, the namers or the nicknamers? Is this getting confusing? Maybe we should ask the Beatles, who were clever enough not to spell their name like insects but after their rhythmical musical genre, which changed popular music for all time--probably for the worse.

I think we had better get back to the bug.

The pictured handsome guy is a bug, an Hemipteran. He’s flat across the back and has that shield shape, due to the fact that his forewings are half leathery and half membranous. That’s what makes him a bug. Of course, there are other differences as well. This guy has piercing-sucking mouthparts; beetles usually chew.

In my curious youth, I carried a relative of the pictured specimen, a big Hemipteran called a Wheel Bug, in the car on a family trip. I put a couple of moths in the jar with it and watched as its piercing-sucking mouthparts reduced the moths to powder in a matter of minutes. Mom and Dad were thrilled.

The photograph pictures one of the “leaf-footed" bugs, for reasons that may be obvious. Its genus is Acanthocephala—why do insects usually have names longer than their bodies?

Now that I’ve driven you buggy with this buggy drivel, I’ll just say so long for now. Don’t let the bedbugs bite—and yes, bedbugs are real bugs, although they are not as buggy in appearance as our typical pictured specimen.

Now I’ve gotcha itchin’!

Theological lesson? If it weren’t for sin and its consequences, maybe we would have only friendly vegetarian insects. Just a thought.