One in every four animal species is a beetle

Beetles, the order Coleoptera, are the most species-rich group of animals on Earth. Scientists have described more than 350,000 beetle species — and likely many more await discovery — making beetles roughly 40% of all known insects and the single largest order in the animal kingdom.

Stack that against the backboned animals we tend to notice: there are about eight times as many beetle species as all the fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals put together. Put another way, over one-quarter of every known animal species is a beetle.

Their secret is a tough, hinged forewing called the elytron, a hardened shield that protects the flight wings and lets beetles burrow, dive, and survive almost anywhere — from deserts to rainforest canopies to freshwater streams. When the biologist J.B.S. Haldane was asked what study of nature revealed about its Creator, he is said to have replied that He must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”