Meet the beetles, the world's most successful insects

There's a lot we can learn from beetles.

Of course, we can learn that the love you take is equal to the love you take. (Although that was something we could learn from a Beatle – in this case, Paul McCartney, who wrote "The End").

We could also learn that life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend. (Although that was from two Beatles, McCartney and John Lennon, who collaborated on "We Can Work It Out.")

But we can learn from beetles, too. We can learn from those little bugs that survived two mass extinctions.

Two. Mass. Extinctions.

How do they do it? Well, for starters, they thrive even though for one stage of life, they're called pupa.

Pupa!

Having an easy-to-make-fun-of name probably makes you tougher. NFL players Dick Butkus and Harry Colon were tough, probably due to having unfortunate names. It's probable that other insects make fun of beetles in the pupa stage because . . . that stage has a funny name. And still, beetles get the last laugh on insects. Actually, on all animals.

Did you know that of the world's estimated 1 million insect species, 400,000 (40%) are beetles species?

Even more dramatic: About 25% of all animal species are beetles. In other words, beetles comprise the same percentage of all animal species that George Harrison made up of the Beatles.

Think about that the next time you look at the floor and see it needs sweeping while your guitar gently weeps. (Although that's the word of a Beatle – in this case, the aforementioned Harrison).

How did that happen? (The breadth of beetles species, not Beatles thoughts sneaking into this column.)

Scientists aren't sure.

I assume most scientists get sidetracked by thinking of the rock band from Liverpool rather than the insect when they hear the word "beetle." I presume they joke that the insects will live in strawberry fields forever and can be found here, there and everywhere. I assume that the scientists then begin laughing uncontrollably.

But once they get a chance to think deeper, they're unsure.

“We don’t know the precise answer,” says Carolyn Chaboo, an entomologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in an article in Knowable Magazine about the magnitude of beetles species.

We just know that beetles have shown a remarkable ability to adapt, a challenge they continue to face during this period of human dominance. Beetles survive and advance, like a feisty college basketball team in the NCAA tournament. They outlive their competitors, like McCartney and Ringo Starr have done. In a world where we talk about humans at the top of the food chain and wonder at the diversity of animal life, there is one animal still doing well after all these years.

One day, it's possible the beetles will reflect on the words of the only Beatle I haven't quoted yet and say, "Now you're expecting me to live without you, but that's not something that I'm lookin' forward to."

Of course, it's Ringo Starr's "Photograph," but it might as well be a literal beetle.

The Beatles are the most successful rock band in history and the beetles are the most successful species-creator in history. Imagine how they endured two mass extinction events and continued to thrive.

They took a sad song and made it better.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.