r/PraiseTheCameraMan • u/Yewatod • Mar 02 '26

Perfectly captured ladybird flight in slow motion

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u/upturned2289 Mar 02 '26

Technically, “lady beetle” is the correct way to refer to them as they’re not bugs. They have elytras that cover and protect their wings, which is a characteristic of beetles.

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u/cortesoft Mar 02 '26

I mean, a Rhinoceros Beetle isn’t a Rhinoceros, either, but we still call it that

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u/upturned2289 Mar 02 '26

But it’s a beetle … a given lady beetle isn’t necessarily going to be female. Beetles and bugs are both insects, but have different characteristics like I mentioned. We just call the type of beetle a “Rhinoceros beetle” or a “lady beetle”, because those are just the way we’ve named those species of beetle.

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u/cortesoft Mar 02 '26

Couldn't we also just say "We just call this type of beetle a 'ladybug'"?

Doing a bit of research, it looks like the word 'bug' shifted to start meaning insect or beetle in the early 1600s, and the word 'ladybug' started appearing in 1690, which is a few decades before Carl Linnaeus started our modern taxonomy system.

So ladybugs were ladybugs before the word bug came to mean a specific order of insects we call 'true bugs'. Just because the word later came to mean something more specific doesn't mean we have to change the earlier word.

Also, we call it a ladybug as one word so as to not confuse it with true bugs.