"There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J. B. S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, 'An inordinate fondness for beetles.'"
— G. E. Hutchinson, President, American Society of Naturalists, in a speech to the Society's annual meeting
Characters who have a great curiosity and interest in beetles that they wanna hold it in their hand and love, love them do. Very common in anime, so let it be.
The interest may spawn either from a fascination of bugs since childhood, or that said character was raised throughout so by them. For when the character shares the same species as the bugs, see Mouse World.
See also Bug Catching, Friend to Bugs, and Scarab Power.
Not to be confused with fans of the legendary British band.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Azumanga Daioh: Osaka occasionally displays interests in entomology and malacology as a hobby, given her non-sequiturs about sea slugs and insects. She apparently has a "bug collection" and asks Yomi if a snail would fit into it.
- Naruto: Members of the Aburame Clan not only has interest in beetles, they literally become homes for them, controlling the beetles in exchange for their own chakra.
- One Piece: Luffy shows a keen interest in beetles in the Skypeia arc. In fact, he once becomes uncertain whether he'd rather have the One Piece or a pet stag beetle.
- Region: Ryuuto, who is willing to risk bullying from his classmates and elementary school teacher over his refusal to let them kill the insect collection they're keeping as a class project. This leads to him sleeping with the insects in his bed to help them stay warm, much to his unsuspecting sister's chagrin.
- Haruhi Suzumiya: In the anime's second season, during the summer "Groundhog Day" Loop, Haruhi leads the group on beetle hunting (and she wins every time).
- Free!: Momotarou Mikoshiba likes to catch stag beetles and even tries to give one as a present to Gou, who he has a crush on.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion: Jobin Higashikata. He's a mature and sharp businessman, but can be distracted by exploiting his interest in hobbies such as gambling in fights with his large collection of beetles.
- Flower Knight Dakini:
- Eiden carries an encyclopedia about the giant beetles that roam the land and when encountering the Great Silver Jaw, he even briefly forgets about running away to admire it.
- After Dakini kills the Great Silver Jaw, Eiden sells the shell in a later chapter to an enthusiast wearing several accessories in the likeness of the beetles.
- I Want Your Mother To Be With Me!: Asahi. In his first appearance he's wearing a kabutomushi T-shirt, and later on he keeps a beetle as a pet (and learns about loss when it dies). Ryo bonds with him by making him an origami beetle and bringing over a picture book about insects.
Comic Books
- In Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, Amadeus Arkham inherited his unhealthy (for both him and the beetles) obsession with beetles from his mother, who ingested them because they symbolized rebirth (it bears mentioning that Arkham's entire family was insane).
Film
- In Goodnight Mommy, Elias keeps a vast number of captured cockroaches in a terrarium and plays with them throughout the film.
- Love at First Bite: Renfield, Dracula's faithful assistant, lives on a diet of insects.
Literature
- Discworld: In The Last Continent, the God of Evolution is all about beetles. He recurs in The Science of Discworld where he shares his passion for beetles with Charles Darwin.
- Star Wars Legends:
- As a child, Jacen Solo had a fascination with beetles.
- In Galaxy of Fear: The Swarm, it's noted that some of the S'krrr, particularly Vroon, all but worship drog beetles. Vroon, unfortunately, takes it to the extent of Belief Makes You Stupid, using his position as chief gardener aboard the station to kill all drog beetle predators in the garden to protect the beetles. Which are a species of Explosive Breeder carnivore. His Karmic Death is very justified indeed when the swarming insects eat him alive as part of their rampage through the station.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: In chapter five, Tom plays with a beetle while in church. The other worshipers and even a dog get into the act.
- The Chronicles of Narnia: One of the first things we find out about Eustace Scrubb is that he "liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card".
- Blandings Castle: In Something Fresh, J. Preston Peters is fanatical about scarabs and has a large collection. When Lord Emsworth absent-mindedly takes one home, it becomes the MacGuffin for the rest of the story.
Live-Action TV
- On CSI, Gil Grissom's specialism is forensic entomology, and enthusing about the particular species of bugs crawling all over the Corpse of the Week is one of his many Nightmare Fetishist traits.
- Game of Thrones: The only trait we know of Tyrion Lannister's intellectually disabled cousin Orson is that he apparently loved to smash beetles with rocks.
- House of the Dragon: Helaena Targaryen's Establishing Character Moment is her waxing encyclopedically to her mother about her pet millipede. She also has a collection of bugs preserved in a box. As an adult, she's shown embroidering insect patterns while her cherubic-looking twins playing with insect-shaped toys.
Professional Wrestling
- Masahito Kakihara has a fondness for beetles, specifically stag beetles.
Video Games
- Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard: The raccoon in the grotto is obsessed with catching the glowing beetles that live there, enough so that he's willing to stay there for days on end in hopes of catching them. He's determined to stay there even when a huge, metal beast erupts from the grotto floor.
- Pathologic 2: When playing as Daniil Dankovsky in The Marble Nest DLC, if you have a beetle in your inventory the touch quote states "I used to collect these as a kid. Left the collection with my father."
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Agitha has Link collect bugs (among which are two types of beetle) for her in exchange for money and increases to his wallet capacity.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Beggar is so completely obsessed with beetles he will pay crazy amounts of money every time someone brings him one. You can exploit a design flaw in the game (whereby one beetle turns into three when released from its bottle) to get very rich very quickly.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Strich, one of Groose's lackeys, is also insect-obsessed.
- Beedle, a recurring character seen in several games, is (true to his name) a beetle lover. In Skyward Sword, he has his own beloved pet beetle (despite it not technically being the same Beedle), while in Breath of the Wild, he will excitedly buy beetles from you (or, if you decline his offer to trade a rare Energetic Rhino Beetle in your possession, plot under his breath to hire someone to steal it from you).
- Mushiking: This is central to the series, as all Mons in question are all realistic-looking beetles.
- Super Mario RPG: Booster is a beetle enthusiast, and has his lackeys go out and collect them for him. Mario can also collect beetles for coins, and there's a purchasable mini-game called Beetle Mania.
- Granblue Fantasy: Barawa has a passion for beetles, eagerly examining each and everyone in the tropical jungle of Palapogos Island. It's later revealed that his rival, Chat Noir, shares an equally passionate love for beetles.
- THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls: Jougasaki Rika is a middle-schooler heavily into the Gal subculture — nevertheless, her favorite things are beetles and stickers, which is meant to show her childish side, and that her preoccupation with sex appeal is because of her admiration of her sister.
- Yo-kai Watch: A few quests, such as "Which Beetle's Better" in Yo-kai Watch 2, involve Bug Catching for bug fans.
Webcomics
- Girl Genius: Dr. Tarsus Beetle chose a stylized beetle as his emblem, present all over his city, Beetleburg.
- In The Water Phoenix King, Gilgam has quite a few beetles decorating his equipment. His pauldrons, the large pin which unfolds into a collar that connects them over his warmer-weather gear, the charge crystals for his gun, are all scarab-shaped, and his riding-beast is a robot that looks like a cross between an ant and a beetle of some sort. It makes sense...
Western Animation
- Beetlejuice: In the animated series at least, beetles are the favorite treat of Beetlejuice's, probably a less nasty alternative to the blowfly and cockroach we see him eat in the movie.
- Hey Arnold!: Nadine is a complete bug maniac and speaks of her love of beetles at least once.
- The Other Mother in Coraline has a quite a fondness for beetle motifs. So much so, in fact, that she has an entire room decorated with sentient beetle furniture and insect-patterned wallpaper. In the room's first appearance, she is shown munching on one of her favorite treats, cocoa beetles from Zanzibar. The room didn't start that way. It's the true form of the Other World counterpart to a rather ordinary room in the Pink Palace, and all the bug imagery is a sign that the Other Mother's illusion is starting to fade away.
Real Life
- Some of Charles Darwin's earliest interests were in beetles. Of course, it wasn't until he started looking at finches that he put his name down in history, but things might have been different if Darwin wasn't so interested in beetles. To give an example of how strong his obsession with beetles and beetle collecting was, once as a young man he was returning home after collecting beetles in the woods when he came across a bombardier beetle. Even though he was already out of room to carry it, he was determined to bring it home with him and attempted to carry it in his mouth. Naturally, this resulted in him discovering what being sprayed in the mouth by a bombardier beetle was like, and the resulting effects caused him to lose both the bombardier and all the other beetles he'd collected. He described the event with great enthusiasm in his diary.
- There once was a boy named Satoshi Tajiri, who counted among his favorite pastimes catching beetles and setting them against beetles his friends had collected. He later went on to work for Nintendo, and eventually parlayed his childhood memories into a pop-culture phenomenon which still endures decades later.
