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gumby • yesterday at 8:13 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

Famously, when asked about a god, J.B.S. Haldane allegedly said that if there is a god or gods, they must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”


Replies

0cf8612b2e1e • yesterday at 9:28 PM

There is a Discworld joke about this. After being introduced to the God of evolution, God shows off the magnum opus he has been developing, the cockroach.

hermitcrab • yesterday at 10:35 PM

I read somewhere that some scientists now think there may be more species of wasps than beetles. Not least because many species of beetle seem to have a species of wasps that prey on them.

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adammarples • yesterday at 8:44 PM

This is because when they would lay a sheet on the ground and shake the branches of a tree, they would often find more species of beetles than anything else. However, they may have been extrapolating a bit far from the few places they tried this.

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