History Main / SomewhereAnEntomologistIsCrying

* ''Series/{{CSI}}'':
** In an early episode, Catherine is crawling under a collapsed building and comes across a large (at least an inch and a half or so) cockroach crawling on a fallen beam. Fast forward to later in the episode where the insect is supposedly identified as a powderpost beetle.. Cockroaches and beetles are in entirely different orders and the cockroach shown on the screen was at least 10 times the size of a powderpost beetle (which is about 1/8 of an inch and much thinner). Using mammals, this would be similar to saying that a lion and a rat are comparable. This is really a bad case of the writers not doing their research, since though entomologists don't always know every single species outside of the family they specialize in, an entomologist like Grissom would have at least likely known enough to tell those two apart. As roaches are much easier for a production crew to obtain than powderpost beetles, it's probably just TerrifyingPetStoreRat at work.

* In an early episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'', Catherine is crawling under a collapsed building and comes across a large (at least an inch and a half or so) cockroach crawling on a fallen beam. Fast forward to later in the episode where the insect is supposedly identified as a powderpost beetle.. Cockroaches and beetles are in entirely different orders and the cockroach shown on the screen was at least 10 times the size of a powderpost beetle (which is about 1/8 of an inch and much thinner). Using mammals, this would be similar to saying that a lion and a rat are comparable.
** This is really a bad case of the writers not doing their research, since though entomologists don't always know every single species outside of the family they specialize in, an entomologist like Grissom would have at least likely known enough to tell those two apart. Alternately, as roaches are much easier for a production crew to obtain than powderpost beetles, it's probably just TerrifyingPetStoreRat at work.

* The giant bugs in Literature/GrasshopperJungle are similar to praying mantises, and they are described as being very fast and strong. In reality, the exoskeleton should have made heavy and slow, and the giant bugs shouldn't have been capable of surviving, since a bug's breathing mechanism only works because they're small.

* In one arc of ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', Calvin adds an earthworm to his insect collection because "worms are bugs". Earthworms are from a separate phylum (Annelida) than insects (Arthropoda). Entomologists may be spared some weeping by the fact that Calvin may not actually think worms are bugs; he's just desperate to fill out his collection with ANYTHING (he has only two actual insects; other items include the worm, a smashed spider, and "a piece of lint that looks like a bug") before class starts. At least it's better than in a later arc where he thinks ''bats'' are bugs (in this one Hobbes tries to point out Calvin's error early on, and as soon as Calvin starts reading his report in class the entire class yells in unison "Bats aren't bugs!"). [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in both cases. Calvin is six years old and, while he is certainly intelligent, he doesn't pay attention in class unless it involves dinosaurs. It's not surprising that his understanding of entomology would be a [[{{Pun}} mite]] unreliable.

* InsectGenderBender: In eusocial insects such as honeybees and ants, almost all members of a colony are generally female (and sterile); the rare males, usually called drones, are little more than {{Glorified Sperm Donor}}s.

** Bees are typically portrayed as repeatedly stinging. Worker honeybees have barbed stingers, so if they sting once their stinger will get stuck and get ripped off as the bee frees itself, which will resulting in the bee's death. Other species can sting over and over, but since media usually focuses on honeybees, the portrayal is most often incorrect.

in a pinch. Likewise, maggots, caterpillars, and ''earthworms'' (which aren't even arthropods) are commonly played by mealworms, which are beetle larvae cheaply available at any pet store. See TerrifyingPetStoreRat for more on this.

* An appalling number of films, stories, and UrbanLegends attribute a parasitoid reproductive strategy -- i.e. FaceFullOfAlienWingWong -- to arthropods that don't do any such thing, purely for BodyHorror's sake. In reality, only some species of insects (mainly wasps and flies) breed that way. In fiction, it's often associated with other kinds of insects, or even spiders (no real spiders use parasitic reproduction methods).

** This practice isn't limited to roaches: ''every'' scuttling insect that's not an ant may be played by a "hisser"

** This practice isn't limited to roaches: ''every'' scuttling insect that's not an ant may be played by a "hisser" in a pinch. Likewise, maggots, caterpillars, and ''earthworms'' (which aren't even arthropods) are commonly played by mealworms, which are beetle larvae cheaply available at any pet store. See TerrifyingPetStoreRat for more on this.
* Pretty much everyone, in fiction and out of it, refers to every insect (and arthropods in general) at some point or another as a bug. In entomology, a bug only refers to the order Hemiptera, aka "true bugs", which contains insects like aphids and cicadas. The common identifier of a "true bug" is a rigid proboscis for feeding.

* Insects with compound eyes don't actually see thousands of identical repeated images in each facet. They see one blurry composite image (since most insects have pretty poor visual resolution and focus instead on detecting movement). In older works this may be a case of ScienceMarchesOn.
* Winged insects are often depicted as only having two wings, when most have four. The exceptions are flies (whose hindwings are modified into halteres), beetles (forewings modified into elytra), male scale insects (hindwings reduced) and male twisted-winged parasites (forewings modified into halteres).

* Insects are hardly ever portrayed having the correct number of eyes, usually having the human standard of two. Most insects have five eyes, although the two main ones are usually much bigger and more noticeable.

* Insects are hardly ever portrayed having the correct number of eyes, usually having the standard two. Most insects have five eyes, although the two main ones are usually much bigger and more noticeable.
* Bees are typically portrayed as repeatedly stinging. Worker honeybees have barbed stingers, so if they sting once their stinger will get stuck and get ripped off as the bee frees itself, which will resulting in the bee's death. Other species can sting over and over, but since media usually focuses on honeybees, the portrayal is most often incorrect.

* Praying mantises will usually be drawn having their arms ending at the tibia, lacking the tarsus at the end which is used for walking (for a very rough comparison, the raptorial claw would emerge from the equivalent of the wrist for a human). Some individual mantises can lose the tarsus from damage and old age admittedly. The popularly cited "fact" that they eat their mates is also false, at least in the wild - the recorded cases of such have almost always happened in captivity, complete with confined spaces and artificial conditions (it does occur in the wild, but much more rarely, since males are able to more easily escape).

* Very often in fiction when a cockroach is needed a Madagascar hissing cockroach is used as a substitute for any other species, as they are larger than many local roaches elsewhere and fairly placid. As the name suggests, they can only be found in the wild in Madagascar. This isn't limited to roaches, either: ''every'' scuttling insect that's not an ant may be played by a "hisser" in a pinch. Likewise, maggots, caterpillars, and ''earthworms'' (which aren't even arthropods) are commonly played by mealworms, which are beetle larvae cheaply available at any pet store. See TerrifyingPetStoreRat for more on this.

** Depicting all wasps and hornets as honey-makers. Bees make honey because they gather nectar from flowers, and while wasps and hornets have diets that can vary from nectar-feeding to omnivorous to outright predatory, they generally do not produce honey. While some species of wasps and hornets ''do'' make honey, but it is usually inedible for humans.

* What most people refer to as a "wild" beehive is actually a mix between an antique bee skep and a hornet's nest. ''Actual'' wild beehives look like [[http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/08/09/features/artb.jpg this]] or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhbc4FQEtL0 this]]. See StockBeehive for more on the subject.

* What most people refer to as a "wild" beehive is actually a mix between an antique bee skep and a hornet's nest. ''Actual'' wild beehives look like [[http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/08/09/features/artb.jpg this]] or [[http://www.volcanoislandhoney.com/photos/puako/7-WildBee.jpg this]]. See StockBeehive for more on the subject.
** Also, there's the common mistake of calling wasps "bees", or mistaking hornets for other kinds of wasps. Referring to wasps as bees would be like calling every primate a "chimpanzee" - phylogenetically, all bees are wasps, not the other way around. (And so are ants - biology is very confusing.) Hornets, meanwhile, are also a specific ''type'' of wasp, but are distinguished from other vespine wasps by the relatively large top margin of the head and by the rounded segment of the abdomen just behind the waist.
** Not to mention depicting all wasps and hornets as honey-makers. Bees make honey because they gather nectar from flowers, and while wasps and hornets have diets that can vary from nectar-feeding to omnivorous to outright predatory, they generally do not produce honey. (That said, some species of wasps and hornets ''do'' make honey, but it is usually inedible for humans.)

One common example is [[InsectGenderBender humans imposing inappropriate gender roles on insects]]. Often, the colonies of eusocial hymenopteran insects (bees, wasps, and ants) are depicted in cartoons as having male workers, whereas in RealLife, all the workers are female in almost all species (there are a few ant species with males that assist the female workers, but they are a very small minority of species). The "no male workers" rule applies only to eusocial insects in the order Hymenoptera, however. Termites are eusocial and they have both male and female workers, but since termites are invariably seen as pests and don't have the charisma of bees or ants, the fictional stories with termite heroes are vanishingly few. Another example is the appearance of a blood-sucking male mosquito. Only female mosquitoes suck blood (this doesn't apply to other types of bloodsucking flies, however).

Perhaps the most JustForFun/{{egregious}} example, though, is drawing insects with four legs instead of the correct six. [[Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses This is]] ''[[Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses kindergarten]]'' [[Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses science, people! Kindergarten!]]

* Praying mantises will usually be drawn having their arms ending at the tibia, lacking the tarsus at the end which is used for walking (for a very rough comparison, the raptorial claw would emerge from the equivalent of the wrist for a human). The popularly cited "fact" that they eat their mates is also false, at least in the wild - the recorded cases of such have almost always happened in captivity, complete with confined spaces and artificial conditions (it does occur in the wild, but much more rarely, since males are able to more easily escape).

* Almost every story that features ants and bees will [[InsectGenderBender show males among the colonial castes]]. However, ant and bee colonies are almost entirely females, with males only existing as drones which die shortly after mating with the queens. Also, all ants and bees are children of the queen (excluding some slave-maker ant species), which is generally ignored in works of fiction. Termite colonies ''are'' made up of both males and females, however.

* Insects with compound eyes don't actually see thousands of identical repeated images in each facet. They see one blurry composite image (since most insects have pretty poor visual resolution). In older works this may be a case of ScienceMarchesOn.

** Pain's "centipede" summon has what's a snake head with fangs tacked onto the sides.

* An appalling number of films, stories, and UrbanLegends attribute a parasitoid reproductive strategy -- i.e. FaceFullOfAlienWingWong -- to arthropods that don't do any such thing, purely for BodyHorror's sake. In reality, only some species of insects (mainly wasps and flies) breed that way. In fiction, it's often associated with other kinds of insects.

* InsectGenderBender: In eusocial insects such as honeybees, ants, and termites, almost all members of a colony are generally female (and sterile); the rare males, usually called drones, are little more than {{Glorified Sperm Donor}}s.

* FourLeggedInsect: Real-world adult insects have six legs (and three body segments, with the legs attached to the thorax, though it can sometimes be hard to tell), while arachnids have eight legs and two body segments. Fictional insects are often given the wrong number.

* MantisMatingMeal: Wildly exaggerated in frequency in fiction: roughly seventy percent of the time, the male lives to mate another day. And when it does happen, it's usually ''before'' mating as DisproportionateRetribution to an unwanted suitor, not afterwards.

* StockBeehive: Honeybees don't build hives like this: they prefer to nest inside tree hollows.

Subtrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology. Supertrope of InsectGenderBender, FourLeggedInsect, WormInAnApple, and StockBeehive. Compare the above-mentioned ArtisticLicenseArachnids, which could also qualify as a sub-trope[[note]]Up until the 19th Century, Entomology was the study of all arthropods, not just insects, due to the lack of distinction[[/note]]. See also FunnyAnimalAnatomy.

* A suspect in ''Series/{{Castle}}'s'' season 2 finale claimed he spent several weeks in Afghanistan with fire ants crawling on his privates. [[MisplacedWildlife Fire ants are native to the Americas, not Afghanistan.]] Possibly a subversion, however, as the guy was [[ItsALongStory only pretending to be a spy]], and probably wasn't an entomologist.
** Could also be TranslationConvention, as ants that sting are fairly common worldwide, and "fire ant" would be a plausible English rendering of a local Afghani variety's name.

* Insects, crustaceans and myriapods all do not have jaws that open and close like a vertebrate's, and they do not have teeth or tongues like we do, though stylization of cartoon insect mouths to a jagged beak can be partly forgiven due to the labrum and paired maxillae sort of resembling one (more info [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_mouthparts here]]). Even depictions with proper mouthparts often get their appearance wrong, though. To list just two examples: spider fangs always point downwards, not inwards towards each other like insect mandibles, and aren't used to suck the juices from prey (they have a tiny mouth-hole which is what regurgitates enzymes and does the sucking afterwards); and while a mosquito's proboscis is syringe-shaped (though partially covered by a sheathe), it's certainly not positioned anywhere near where the nose would be on a vertebrate.

* An appalling number of films, stories, and UrbanLegends attribute a parasitoid reproductive strategy -- i.e. FaceFullOfAlienWingWong -- to arthropods that don't do any such thing, purely for BodyHorror's sake. In reality, only some species of insects (mainly wasps and flies) breed that way. In fiction, it's often associated with beetles.

* Male mosquitos shown sucking blood. AnimalGenderBender is in full effect here, as only female mosquitos drink blood (they need the extra protein to produce eggs), while males are exclusively plant-eating, feeding on sap, nectar, and fruit juices. There's a type of bloodsucking ''moth'' in which the roles are reversed, but [[SeldomSeenSpecies good luck ever seeing that in media]].

* Winged insects are often depicted as only having two wings, which is inaccurate except for flies and mosquitoes.

Subtrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology. Supertrope of InsectGenderBender, FourLeggedInsect, and StockBeehive. Compare the above-mentioned ArtisticLicenseArachnids, which could also qualify as a sub-trope[[note]]Up until the 19th Century, Entomology was the study of all arthropods, not just insects, due to the lack of distinction[[/note]]. See also FunnyAnimalAnatomy.

* Very often in fiction when a cockroach is needed a Madagascar hissing cockroach is used as a substitute for any other species, as they are larger than many local roaches elsewhere and fairly placid. As the name suggests, they can only be found in the wild in Madagascar. This isn't limited to roaches, either: ''every'' scuttling insect that's not an ant may be played by a "hisser" in a pinch. Likewise, maggots, caterpillars, and ''earthworms'' (which aren't even arthropods) are commonly played by mealworms, which are beetle larvae cheaply available at any pet store.

* Almost every story that features ants and bees will show males among the colonial castes. However, ant and bee colonies are almost entirely females, with males only existing as drones which die shortly after mating with the queens. Also, all ants and bees are children of the queen (excluding some slave-maker ant species), which is generally ignored in works of fiction. Termite colonies ''are'' made up of both males and females, however.

* Insects with compound eyes don't actually see thousands of identical repeated images in each facet. They see one blurry composite image (since most insects have pretty poor visual resolution).

** Red forest ants (''Formica rufa'') indeed do shoot liquid acid, but they do it from their own abdomen, not using larvae. The sticky goo produced by larvae is also real, but it's used by South-American leafcutter ants to glue their nests together.

** There's also the case of how these creatures could bring TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, since the American continent is essentially a giant island, and praying mantises are notoriously bad fliers and swimmers (they can infect human to carry their eggs, but the events of the novel take place in a scarcely populated, almost desert town), so this is likely a case of UnreliableNarrator.
* The bug-like aliens from Literature/EndersGame and its sequels are a nice subversion, at least in most regards. Their societies are very female oriented, including by using female pronouns to refer to to a multi-gendered group (like humans use the male ones). They also evolved an internal skeleton, which allowed them to grow much larger.

* Apple worms are moth caterpillars. They don't look remotely like earthworms. This fact is apparently unknown to the person who drew this webcomic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1704#comic

* Portraying the queen caste in eusocial insect species [[InsectQueen as literal royalty]] that commands the rest of the colony is also common, but is inaccurate. The actions of the other castes are largely autonomous in the same way cells in the body do need to be consciously told to repair injuries or transfer nutrients. The queen's main duty is simply to produce eggs to keep up the colony's numbers. If the workers find the queen's production to be insufficient for the colony, they may even ''kill'' and then replace her.

Subtrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology. Supertrope of InsectGenderBender, FourLeggedInsect, and StockBeehive. Compare the above-mentioned ArtisticLicenseArachnids, which could also qualify as a sub-trope. See also FunnyAnimalAnatomy.

* Praying mantises will usually be drawn having their arms ending at the tibia, lacking the tarsus at the end which is used for walking. The popularly cited "fact" that they eat their mates is also false, at least in the wild - the recorded cases of such have almost always happened in captivity, complete with confined spaces and artificial conditions.
* Insects are hardly ever portrayed having the correct number of eyes, usually having the standard two. Most insects have five eyes, although the two main ones are usually much more noticeable.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Antz}}'' has male worker and soldier ants.

* ''WesternAnimation/BeeMovie'' has male worker bees and a blood-sucking male mosquito named Mooseblood. The insects have four legs. The bees also have parents. This is however called out in the court scene to invoke [[BatmanGambit getting stung by the leads best friend]] to win over the court. Said bee is male and survives by getting a transplant.

** Also, the ants are shown dragging people into their nests and forming a biological ladder out of ants just to get to a character hanging from a tree.

* RuleOfFunny example: ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella'' has a superheroine named the Queen Beetle. The "queen" title implies eusociality, but there are no eusocial species of beetles.

One common example is [[InsectGenderBender humans imposing inappropriate gender roles on insects]]. Often, the colonies of eusocial hymenopteran insects (bees, wasps, and ants) are depicted in cartoons as having male workers, whereas in RealLife, all the workers are female in almost all species (there are a few ant species with males that assist the female workers, but they are a very small minority of species). The "no male workers" rule applies only to eusocial insects in the order Hymenoptera, however. Termites are eusocial and they have both male and female workers. Another example is the appearance of a blood-sucking male mosquito. Only female mosquitoes suck blood (this doesn't apply to other types of bloodsucking flies, however).

** Not to mention depicting all wasps and hornets as honey-makers. Bees make honey because they gather pollen from flowers, and while wasps and hornets have diets that can vary from nectar-feeding to omnivorous to outright predatory, they generally do not produce honey. (That said, some species of wasps and hornets ''do'' make honey, but it is inedible.)

* Very often in fiction when a cockroach is needed a Madagascar hissing cockroach is used as a substitute, as they are larger than the local roaches and fairly placid. As the name suggests, they can only be found in the wild in Madagascar. This isn't limited to roaches, either: ''every'' scuttling insect that's not an ant may be played by a "hisser" in a pinch. Likewise, maggots, caterpillars, and ''earthworms'' (which aren't even arthropods) are commonly played by mealworms, which are beetle larvae cheaply available at any pet store.

* Insects are hardly ever portrayed having the correct number of eyes, usually having the standard two. Most insects have five eyes, albeit the two main ones are usually much more noticeable.
* Bees are invariably portrayed as repeatedly stinging. Worker honeybees have barbed stingers, so if they sting once their stinger will get stuck and get ripped off as the bee frees itself, which will resulting in the bee's death.

** A filler arc brings us "bees" that are very obviously hornets (although this is a translation error since the word 'hachi' can refer to either bees or wasps), a 12-foot beetle with a trunk (it trumpets like an elephant, too) and cockroaches which don't look or move like cockroaches.

* Lampshaded in an episode of ''Manga/{{Sabagebu}}'', where the Survival Club's adviser [[TheFool Ena Sakura]] cracks open a hornet's nest thinking there'd be honey inside, which TheNarrator outright points out hornets do not produce honey as they are carnivorous.

* In one arc of ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', Calvin adds an earthworm to his insect collection because "worms are bugs". Earthworms are from a separate phylum (Annelida) than insects (Arthropoda). Entomologists may be spared some weeping by the fact that Calvin may not actually think worms are bugs; he's just desperate to fill out his collection with ANYTHING (he has only two actual insects; other items include the worm, a smashed spider, and "a piece of lint that looks like a bug") before class starts. At least it's better than in a later arc where he thinks ''bats'' are bugs (in this one Hobbes tries to point out Calvin's error early on, and as soon as Calvin starts reading his report in class the entire class yells in unison "Bats aren't bugs!").
** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in both cases. Calvin is six years old and, while he is certainly intelligent, he doesn't pay attention in class unless it involves dinosaurs. It's not surprising that his understanding of entomology would be a [[{{Pun}} mite]] unreliable.

* ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'' featured ants being bullied by grasshoppers. RealLife ants are ''extremely aggressive'' in defending their nests, and any grasshopper dumb enough to hang around an anthill would get swarmed, dismembered and eaten. And the ants had four legs, while oddly enough the grasshoppers had the accurate six.