I've got a bug problem. Every time I'm making a video about a small creepy crawly
critter – like this ladybug – a big part of me wants to call it a bug. I mean,
it feels like a bug. But there's also a small part of me that knows that it's not technically a bug
in the scientific sense. What’s up with this disconnect, and why does it bug me so much?
Hi, I’m Cameron, and this is MinuteEarth. Small creepy crawly creatures generally fall into
a few different groups. But when someone says, “hey, look at this weird bug!” they’re usually
referring to an insect – you know, a six-legged exoskeleton-clad creature that has at least one
pair of wings at some point in its life. To an entomologist – someone who studies
insects – bugs are a subgroup of insects; the 8% or so that make up the order Hemiptera. You can
tell these 80,000-ish species of so-called “true bugs” apart from other insects by the straw-shaped
beaks they use to stab their food, inject fluids to dissolve it into a nutritious liquid, and slurp
out the tasty meal. You’re likely familiar with a few of these species, like bed bugs, stink bugs,
or the terrifyingly-named assassin bug. But here’s where it gets confusing – just
because a species has “bug” in its common name does not mean it's a true bug in the
scientific sense. For example, our ladybug from earlier is from a different subgroup of insects
entirely – beetles – and pill bugs aren't even insects at all; they're isopods – more
closely related to crabs than true bugs. So where did all of this confusion come
from? Well, for that it’s time for some entomological etymology.
In the 1400s, the term bug infested the English language, probably from the Welsh word “bwg”. It
was a word for mysterious, creepy things like ghosts. This later appearance in Hamlet is a
good example of that usage. And the word “bwg” also serves as the root of the word
“boogeyman”. But the first time “bug” appeared in writing to describe an insect was in 1594
when a medical textbook described a creepy black creature crawling out of a sore, which is… gross,
and kinda scary, so they called it a “bugge”. By the early 1600’s, a particular type of insect was
thought to be especially haunting: the ones we now call bedbugs – and people regularly used the word
“bugge” to refer to these nocturnal nuisances. So in the 1700s, when Carl Linnaeus was sorting
insects into groups like flies, beetles, and ants, he tossed bed bugs and things like
them – anything with straw-like, slurping mouthparts – into a group called Bugs.
But even though Linnaeus and other scientists that came after narrowed the meaning of the word
"bug" in scientific circles to a specific order of insects, basically everyone else continued
expanding on the original meaning, building on the creepy, ghostly part and applying
the word bug to all sorts of other stuff, like mechanical glitches, illnesses, and, of course,
a wide variety of creepy crawly critters. So that's why I'm torn about whether to call
something like a ladybug a bug. And, actually, when talking to non-scientists about pretty
much any insect, even entomologists sometimes begrudgingly use the word "bug". After all,
the word "bug" can help them communicate more clearly, even if it bugs them to do it.
Popular usage of “bug” might… bother… some people, but at least it doesn’t bother them
in the same way caffeine bothers bugs, which you might have learned in last week’s video.
And if you saw that video, then you probably also saw this awesome coffee mug we made,
which you can get over at Patreon. During the month of April, if you
join at the $6 per month tier or higher, we will draw you as a stick figure and
send you a one-of-a-kind mug with your stick figure on it because you are one-of-a-kind!