Comment by echelon
16 hours ago
I grew up in the South Eastern US, and bug and lizard cages were common educational toys.
I used to catch grasshoppers, lizards, fireflies, and "June bugs" (Popillia japonica).
One summer, there was a particularly bad outbreak of June bugs and if you shook a Japanese maple tree, the entire tree would empty of thousands of them in a dense cloud.
Childhood summers were fun.
I'm pretty convinced that June bugs are the dumbest insects on the planet.
They are so clumsy! They slowly fly and collide into everything.
There are so many "smart" insects with highly evolved predator avoidance. These are not those insects.