This Is Not A Bug

It’s common to call creepy crawlies bugs, but because entomologists refer to a specific class of insects as bugs, it’s wrong to call other things bugs - right?

LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Bug: a small insect, or an insect of a large order distinguished by having mouthparts that are modified for piercing and sucking.
- Entomology: the branch of zoology concerned with the study of insects.
- Etymology: the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.
- Insect: a small arthropod animal that has six legs and generally one or two pairs of wings.

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CREDITS
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Cameron Duke| Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Sarah Berman | Illustration & Video Editing
Ever Salazar | Illustration & Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

OUR STAFF
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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich
Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

OUR LINKS
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REFERENCES
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“Bug” Oxford English Dictionary.

Hester, J. (1594). “The pearle of Practice, or Practisers pearle, for phisicke and chirurgie…”.

MacNeal, D. (2017). “Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them”.

Shakespeare, W. (1603). “Hamlet”.

Zinna, Robert, Assistant Professor of Biology at Mars Hill University. Personal Communication.

[stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis]

I like using "bug" for any small critter of the sort, helps to not say insect incorrectly for spiders and stuff, while using "true bug" for, well, true bugs.

[karendixon]

It's not a bug. It's a feature!

[mediumfast]

I love the way you included the fact that using the word "bug" colloquially is totally okay. This is exactly the kind of communication we need between the scientific community and the general public. We live in a world where there so much gatekeeping and condescension toward people who don't know something, and it's time to be more inclusive and encouraging.

[robcandy]

I'm from the UK and I know it's not a bug. It's some kind of bird

[adventuresinportland]

This is my first time actually hearing that bug is an actual scientific term. I always thought it was just a slang term for all little invertebrates.

[manchest_hair_united]

Recently learned that one of my colleague is an insectophile...

I'm shocked really, never seemed like a guy who would bed bugs.

[johannaverplank]

I honestly didn’t know “bug” was an actual category of insect. I just thought it was a colloquial name for insects in general. Thanks for educating me!

[Naidnapurugavihs]

As an aspiring biologist, I am really impressed by how you guys are able to elucidate unique and fundamental concepts in simple and captivating ways yet you still maintain perfect scientific accuracy ❤❤❤

[Aloddff]

I didn’t know you called them ladybugs

We call them ladybirds in the UK

[KnowArt]

This last sentence is really important. Informal language is not precise, but very clear! As communicators we should rarely be precise _at the expense of_ being clear. Although many if not most of the times they go hand in hand.

[robblake]

in the uk we call "ladybugs" ladybirds, which is even odder!

[sisi]

The computer “bug” term came from actually having a moth getting stuck in circuits of computers that filled rooms, so that also tracks for the linguistic development of the word too!

[cerosis]

Pill bugs? I believe you mean roly poly

[TomHPMc]

Intersting vid on both etymology and entomology! People often confuse the two, which bugs me in ways I can't put into words.

[IllidanS]

I'd definitely just call them "features". As for the specific beetle, that's a "ladybird" to me!

[JacekJurewicz]

In Polish it's even worse, we use the word "robak" (worm) for any insect (or isopod, etc.) that crawls (rather than flies), or maybe even those that can fly, but are crawling at the moment.

[sandpiperbf]

I always say that the popular use of the word "bug" basically means arthropod and am happy to call crabs ocean bugs

[TrailRat]

In the UK we call them Ladybirds. I don't know if this helps or not.

[hiddeqel]

It's interesting that Carl Linnaeus was mentioned. Carl Linnaeus went twice to England but we do not know how much English he knew. He wrote down almost everything in Latin. .

Linnaeus divided the arthropods into three main groups: Insecta (insects), Arachnida (spiders, scorpions, and their relatives), and Crustacea (crabs, lobsters, and their relatives).
He subdivided Insecta in 7 orders of which one: Hemiptera.
This term was later translated as bugs in English.
So while the word "bug" is sometimes used to refer to Hemiptera, it was not a term used by Linnaeus or in his original classification system.
So it's not so much Linnaeus himself, but rather the English translators that wanted to connect this Latin term with one used in English.

[veranet]

I never thought of the word "bug" as a scientific term. I always saw it as it is typically used - a generalized word for multilegged critter.