Beetle

A beetle is a type of insect with a hard shell and two pairs of wings. Beetles belong to a group called Coleoptera, which means "sheath wings" in Greek. The name comes from their front wings, which have turned into hard covers that protect the softer flying wings underneath. Beetles live almost everywhere on Earth except in the deep ocean and in the coldest parts of Antarctica.

Beetles are the largest group of animals in the world. Scientists have identified about 400,000 different kinds, and they think many more are still waiting to be discovered in places like rainforests. About one in every four named animal species is a beetle. That means beetles outnumber all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles put together by a huge amount.

Beetles come in almost every size you can imagine. The smallest, called featherwing beetles, are smaller than a grain of salt. The biggest, the Goliath beetle of Africa, can weigh as much as a small apple and grow longer than your hand. Beetles also come in bright colors. Some shine metallic green, blue, or gold, like tiny jewels.

Every beetle goes through four life stages, a process called complete metamorphosis. It starts as an egg, hatches into a soft grub called a larva, turns into a still pupa, and finally comes out as an adult with a hard shell. A beetle may spend years as a grub and only a few weeks as an adult. Some grubs, like those of the stag beetle, live underground for up to six years before changing.

Beetles eat almost everything. Some munch on leaves, wood, or roots. Others hunt smaller insects. Dung beetles eat animal waste and roll it into balls to bury. Ancient Egyptians watched dung beetles rolling these balls and decided they were sacred. They believed a giant beetle rolled the sun across the sky each day. Carved scarab beetles appear on thousands of Egyptian tombs and jewelry pieces.

Beetles matter to people in big ways. Ladybugs eat pests that damage crops. Dung beetles clean up farmland and return nutrients to the soil. Other beetles, like bark beetles, can kill whole forests of pine trees when their numbers grow too large. The next time you lift a rock or log, look underneath. A beetle is probably there, busy doing one of the countless jobs its family has been doing for 300 million years.