this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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bug is typically something that stings, while insect is more generic.
Not always. Flies, ants, and mosquitoes are all considered bugs, despite having no stinging capacity to speak of.
Ants can definitely sting. Not all of them (some just spray acid or use their jaws to bite) but others have literal stingers.
But that's like...one of the defining features that a 6-year-old could tell you about them?
Well no but yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera
But wasps can sting and they're not bugs. They can also bite. So the key part is piercing with their mouth. For true bugs (as in the biological sense)
Whenever I hold up a bug, and say to everyone, "Look, a bug, of the true order of bugs," everyone leaves the room because I'm doing the bug speech again
Yeah that's because that sounds funny. You should change it to something like "look, a bug. And I say that as this is a member of the order 'hemiptera', also known as 'true bugs.'"
Or perhaps it's just your face? People listen to me quite easily.
i said typically, and colloquially. literally zero people refer to hemiptera specifically when they say bug. if you look at the american heritage dictionary, that's the exact order used in the definitions:
#bug
/bŭg/
noun
An insect having mouthparts used for piercing and sucking, such as an aphid, a bedbug, or a stinkbug.
An insect of any kind, such as a cockroach or a ladybug.
A small invertebrate with many legs, such as a spider or a centipede.
Very ethnocentric of you. I first heard it from Stephen Fry, so no, not literally zero people.
Also, it's literally the first definition there. That's the definition of the species in hemiptera. Just because you don't know anyone who knows orders of animals in latin doesn't mean we don't exist.
I for one always enjoyed reading taxonomy, especially because sometimes translating a species can be quite weird if you don't know the translation and have to essentially hope that the yellow-breasted warbler is the thing they also described it as in the other language. Sometimes it's another feature.
But I'm sure you'd know roughly what I mean if I refer to the order of primates. Possibly the infraorder cetacean as well. Especially if you've watched Star Trek religiously.
Stephen Fry on Insects, and the beauty of nature and Evolution
That's the wrong clip but i can't be arsed to find it