One Of Every Five Living Animal Species Is A Beetle

As a human, it is pretty easy to think of ourselves as at the top on planet Earth. There are six billion of us and we live on every single continent. During our day  we see hundreds if not thousands of other humans and we live in countries made up of millions of us. Not only that, but we always talk about ourselves like we are top dog. Like we have won the evolutionary race.

However, it is all a matter of scale, we only really look at other organisms our own size, which for the most part means us. If we looked down the scale a bit we would realise that we are pretty small fry. That we are not the big hitters we thought we were. Did you know that one in every five animal SPECIES is a beetle? That’s right, there are over 300 000 species of beetle. The estimates for how many actual beetles there are vary quite a bit but even conservative estimates think there may be in the order of a hundred trillion beetles on the planet. That makes our numbers look pretty tiny in comparison.

So next time you think we are the king pins, try looking down.