Insect Power Misconceptions: Moving the Classic Bess Beetle Sled-Pull, a Discrepant Event Activity, Beyond “Gee Whiz”

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Popular features such as “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” (www.ripleys.com) are fond of anecdotes about what great powers insects supposedly have relative to our own, including superior speed and strength. Among those species that have been measured, an Australian tiger beetle holds the record for speed relative to its size at 171 body lengths per second (Kamoun and Hogenhout 1996). Though its absolute forward progress is an unremarkable 5.57 mph, if we convert the beetle’s speed to human terms, a six-foot-tall man would be moving at about 720 mph, close to breaking the sound barrier at sea level (Merritt 1999). For relative strength, the rhinoceros beetle is often mentioned because it can lift as much as 850 times its own weight (Matthews 1992).

Are such comparisons valid or meaningful? A widely used hands-on activity in the K-8 science curriculum seems to show that they are. Bess beetles, Odontotaenius disjunctus (Illiger), are generally the stars of this activity (James and Matthews 2017). The earliest reference to bess beetle strength appeared more than a century ago (Hinds 1901), and today this hands-on demonstration is more popular than ever. Supplies and teaching materials for it are commercially available (Carolina Biological Supply Co., www.carolina.com), and an internet search on the term “bess beetle strength” gets about 87,700 hits.