History Main / SomewhereAnEntomologistIsCrying

Related to SomewhereAnOrnithologistIsCrying and ArtisticLicensePaleontology, this trope covers grievous errors concerning insects and arachnids (spiders, scorpions, mites, etc.).

Then, there is the matter of spiders being able to hiss. With some species, being able to hiss is TruthInTelevision, with some tarantulas (like the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barking_spider barking spider]]). There are also varieties trapdoor spiders that hiss ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzZXffnoT-o you can watch this one do it]]) but not all.

Another example is that, because of SmallTaxonomyPools and the RuleOfScary, a big arachnid that's not very dangerous in real life (such as a tarantula or an [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_scorpion emperor scorpion]]) will be treated as if it ''is'' highly dangerous, making it a rough equivalent of the TerrifyingPetStoreRat. Tarantulas, and the biggest species of scorpions, mainly have venoms that will have little effect on something as big as a human. The most venomous spiders and scorpions are typically quite ''small''. The big ones are chosen because the little ones won't show up on a movie screen and because if an animal with weak venom did end up biting anyone on the cast or crew, it would be less of a problem than if an animal with strong venom bit them.

There's also the size issue. As in [[SquareCubeLaw you can't make a functioning invertebrate that is big enough for a human to ride upon/be eaten by/etc.]], [[RuleOfCool but that never stopped anyone]].

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

* Insects, arachnids, 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 arachnid's limbs are attached to the first of their two body segments (the prosoma) and the insect's the second of their three (the thorax). They are not proportioned or configured like anything remotely resembling a human or a dog. Additionally, insects and arachnids are almost always portrayed as having legs that taper to a point. In reality their legs always end in a tarsus (equivalent to the toes on vertebrates) which usually sports two claws; it's just that the tarsi are so ''tiny'' in many cases that it's hard to see them with the naked eye. The only arthropods that have pointed tips to the legs in real life are crustaceans.

* Being arachnids, scorpions have eight legs (the pincers are pedipalps, which are closer to mouthparts than anything), but good luck finding one in [=TVland=] with the right number of legs. Made all the more grating because a simple Google search would clear up this misunderstanding immediately.
* 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, but in fiction it's often associated with beetles or spiders (the latter of which actually have the egg-laying hole near the ''front'' of the abdomen, and wrap their eggs in a ball of silk for protection, being unable to implant their eggs inside anything).

* Every single spider in fiction will be associated with web-making and silk production. Not all spiders produce webs to hunt, with some preferring to stalk or chase after prey, and even those that do exhibit more variety in web-shapes than the net-like orb-weaver-style net most often seen in fiction, with some like those of the notorious black widow spider looking more like tangles of silken threads without a distinct pattern. A few spiders even hunt from burrows lined with silk that acts as tripwires, but they're SeldomSeenSpecies anyway.
* Insects and arachnids 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), while arachnids usually have eight eyes.

* The manga ''{{Manga/Arachnid}}'' greatly exaggerates insect qualities for the sake of justifying the superpowers of the assassins. And unlike how all the enemies are based on a specific species, Alice jumps all over the place when analogies are made. One chapter she's an Araenid, the next she's a Salticid.

* In-story example: ComicBook/SpiderMan is always being called an "insect" by his foes. He always corrects them.
** For that matter, spiders don't have most of the traits that Spider-Man has. They're not particularly strong for their size, they're not particularly agile and certainly don't have a quasi-mystical spider-sense. What they do have are webs, venom and being extremely hardy and Spider-Man only has 1 of those naturally.
* Many comics, most notably, ''ComicBook/{{Grendel}}'', like to show shots of a Black Widow in the center of its orb web looking sinister... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrodectus The Black Widow Spider]] is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangle_web_spider cobweb weaver]].

* ''WesternAnimation/CharlottesWeb'': Charlotte the spider has antennae like an insect.

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' averts and plays this straight. When Mutt Williams is stung by a slightly oversized emperor scorpion, this conversation ensues:
-->'''Mutt''': I just got stung by one of those scorpions back there!\\
'''Indie''': How big was it?\\
'''Mutt''': Huge!\\
'''Indie''': Great.
-->'''Mutt''': What?!
-->'''Indie''': When it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better. A small one bites you, don't keep it to yourself.
** Of course, then the problem is that the writers and characters assume it's the ''bite'' of a scorpion you have to watch out for.
** Later, the characters are attacked by a massive swarm of ants. Indy calls them 'Siafu'; which is a native name for Driver ants, which only live in Africa. [[MisplacedWildlife The story is set in South America]], which does have terrifying carnivorous ants, but these are members of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_ant a different subfamily of ants]]. Possibly justified, as Indy could have encountered African siafu before and just called the New World equivalents by the first name that popped into his head.

* ''Film/EightLeggedFreaks'': Spiders don't talk. There are a number of other aspects of the eponymous mutants that don't exactly reflect real life spiders (multiple species working together, hissing at prey, practicing kung fu), but the whole verbal expression part kind of overshadows them and the fact the movie itself is played mainly for the humor.

* ''Film/{{Salt}}'' has "milking" a spider done wrong.

* ''Film/DrNo'' did it twice with spiders. First, Dr. No's [[TheDragon dragon]] tried to kill Film/JamesBond by putting a very large tarantula in his bed while he slept. Even if it bit him (it didn't), it would've just hurt a lot. Later, Honey Ryder tells Bond that she killed her landlord [[RapeAsBackStory after he raped her]] by putting a female black widow on his bed, and that it took the guy a week to die. She got very lucky: contrary to urban legend, black widow bites are rarely fatal to humans (they do hurt like hell, though, and can make humans very sick).
* ''Film/KingdomOfTheSpiders'': A swarm of super-aggressive tarantulas with extra-potent venom is blamed on... The spiders' food supply being eliminated by human encroachment. So, the ''lack'' of food made the spiders multiply explosively, change their behavioral patterns (attacking humans and livestock, encasing prey in webbing) and gave them super-potent venom? Not even a mutation by toxic waste or nuclear testing handwave.

* The ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' series features a spider that is sometimes fed to people so that it will kill them from the inside out, but can be killed with coffee because the caffeine drives them into heart attacks. Invertebrates are actually much ''less'' affected by caffeine than mammals are: their circulatory systems are very different.

** One episode had a victim who was killed with Brazilian wandering spider venom and a suspect who owned a Brazilian wandering spider. The "Brazilian wandering spider" that was shown was a small black tarantula, while the real thing is gray and larger than some people's hands. Then again, the real thing is also deadly venomous and quite aggressive, so using a [[TerrifyingPetStoreRat stand-in spider]] makes sense, since [[SmallTaxonomyPools most people wouldn't tell the difference anyway.]]

[[folder:Music]]
* In Music/AliceCooper's ''The Black Widow'', which extols all the terrible evil majestic qualities of the spider [[note]]and yes, strictly speaking, an arachnid and not an insect, but in keeping with the spirit of this trope[[/note]], the deadly, pitiless and evil monarch who devours its mate immediately after sex - is described as "he" and "unholiest of kings".
-->The evil of his sting
-->The horror that he brings,
-->Unholiest of kings -
-->The BlackWidow!
[[/folder]]

* An aversion occurs in ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}''. [[TheEmpire The Coalition States]], as part of its doctrine of making all of its war machine look scary, employs a number of {{Spider Tank}}s called Spider-Skull Walkers (the first generation looked like a human skull with spider legs sprouting from where the spine would be). There are currently three different varieties of Spider-Skull walker, and all three have six legs. A RunningGag for them is an editor's note appearing right after said description which states "Yes, we know spiders have eight legs." One type is built to look like a scorpion, and it has six legs, plus the pincers, suggesting that the designers were aware that a scorpion's pincers aren't really limbs (as mentioned above, in General).

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': The series features various insects and arachnids growing to sizes that would not be physically possible, regardless of their amount of radiation exposure, along with gaining magnificent superpowers, such as being able to breathe fire. ''Fallout'' is supposed to be a [[ILoveNuclearPower parody fueled by radiation]].

** This is lampshaded early on in the first game, when a character notes that the giant scorpions should have their venom greatly diluted, but he is puzzled as to why it seems to remain just as potent.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' has frostbite spiders, which are very clearly actually giant solifugids. While this in and of itself isn't necessarily a problem - many solifugids have "spider" in their names - the fact that they still seem to spin webs and secrete venom is puzzling.
* In ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'', the Canyon Spiders aren't actually spiders at all. They're far larger than any invertebrate could actually be, but that can be forgiven by the RuleOfCool. What they are, though, is rather faithfully modeled giant ''solifugids''. Couldn't they at least call them "Canyon Sunspiders"?

** Not only this but we have many arthropods that fall as Bug-type. We have spiders, scorpions, centipedes, hermit crabs, trilobites and even some kind of rock mollusk. Strangely, the Dwebble line (based on hermit crabs) are Bug-type but the Krabby line (based on sand bubbler crabs) aren't.
* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' has spiders bigger than horses who release their young, two smaller (man-sized) spiders on death. And then there's the Nerubians, a race of six-limbed spider men, and their mutated beetle-like kin the Crypt Lords (who can summon four legged beetles with mandibles bigger than a human arm). Aaargh.
* In ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadowMirrorOfFate Castlevania: Mirror of Fate]]'', the [[spoiler:Lady of the Crypt]] is a gigantic insect-dragon... [[OurMonstersAreWeird thing]] that is killed by Trevor, who tricks it into smashing open the castle gates. In Simon/Alucard's storylines (chronologically after Trevor's), the gates are still jammed open by the massive insect's skeleton. Insect's... skeleton? Looks like the [[spoiler:Lady]] was more dragon than insect after all.
* ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'' has a diversion/activity taking place in a fantastic-drug fueled alternate reality where you control a SpiderTank. The thing actually looked like a rather convincing spider, except with the glaring flaw of having only ''six'' legs...

* In the "Turner Classic Birdman" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HarveyBirdmanAttorneyAtLaw'', a Reducto-shrunk Birdman contends with "a spider... with only six legs!" When he gets a call from Falcon 7 that Vulturo has stolen a hydrogen bomb and feebly insists he has to deal with this emergency first, Falcon 7 isn't sympathetic. "Let's see, hydrogen bomb... gimp spider. Hydrogen bomb or gimp spider, ooooooh...."
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretSaturdays'': Munya is supposed to transform into a spider/human hybrid, but looks much more like a red ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'' with fangs, claws and four tiny legs poking out of his back.
** FridgeBrilliance, when one acknowledges the arguments often used against the existence of giant spiders. He wouldn't be able to function if he had a more spiderlike frame, so his design instead focuses on the spider's main strengths.
* One scene from Disney's ''WesternAnimation/TheMadDoctor'' involves MickeyMouse running into a skeletal spider. In real life, spiders, like all arthropods, have ''exoskeletons'', and therefore do not have bones. Then again, the whole thing was a dream.

* One episode ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'' refers to daddy longlegs as bugs or insects. In the USA, daddy longlegs are arachnids. (Note that in the UK, however, daddy longlegs is a nickname for the Cranefly. The arachnid called daddy longlegs in the US is known as a Harvestman in the UK)
* Lampshaded in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' TV movie "Bender's Game", where the Professor gets angry at Igner for calling a giant spider a "magic bug".
-->'''Professor''': It's not a magic bug, you dope! It's a magic arachnid! Can't you count the legs?!

Subtrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology. Supertrope of InsectGenderBender, FourLeggedInsect, and StockBeehive. See also FunnyAnimalAnatomy.

** For that matter, spiders don't have most of the traits that Spiderman has. They're not particularly strong for their size, they're not particularly agile and certainly don't have a quasi-mystical spider-sense. What they do have are webs, venom and being extremely hardy and Spiderman only has 1 of those naturally.

[[folder: Other]]

* ''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.

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

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

[[folder: Professional Wrestling]]

[[folder:TabletopGames]]

* ''WesternAnimation/CharlottesWeb'': Charlotte the spider has antennae like an insect.

* Lampshaded in the''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' TV movie "Bender's Game", where the Professor gets angry at Igner for calling a giant spider a "magic bug".

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' "Buzzy Bees" update introduces bees to the game. Unlike real world bees, in which only a queen bee can produce offspring, ''any'' two bees can be bred with flowers. Additionally, there is no larva stage; like other breedable Minecraft mobs, baby bees are simply smaller versions of the adults.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' Java Edition 1.15 introduces bees to the game. Unlike real world bees, in which only a queen bee can produce offspring, ''any'' two bees can be bred with flowers. Additionally, there is no larva stage; like other Minecraft mobs, baby bees are simply smaller versions of the adults.

* ''My Girl'' apparently featured honeybees living inside what appears to be a hornet's nest.

* The 2005 TV movie ''Mansquito'' (alternatively called ''Mosquito Man'') lets you know what you're in for right from the titles. The monster in the movie is a mutant hybrid between a mosquito and a human, a la ''Film/TheFly1986.'' The human in question is male, yet as Mansquito, he goes around killing people and drinking their blood. Granted, whatever radiation accident that can transform a human into a bipedal insect might reasonably also be able to swap around secondary sexual characteristics, granting the eponymous monster the anatomy of a female mosquito without spontaneously also changing his preferred pronouns. Given that he loses the ability to speak early in the transformation, his own feelings on the matter are never addressed.

* The bug-like aliens from Literature/EndersGame and it's 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.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' has GiantSpiders and all the woes that this implies. This can rather easily be justified by the meddling of wizards and daedric princes, of course.

* The 2005 TV movie ''Mansquito'', alternatively called ''Mosquito Man.'' Just the titles alone are enough to bring an entomologist to tears. Where to begin? The monster in the movie is a mutant hybrid between a mosquito and a human, a la ''Film/TheFly1986.'' The human in question is male, yet as Mansquito, he goes around killing people and drinking their blood. What makes it worse is that the movie actually ''does'' include a female human/mosquito hybrid, but she's mostly harmless and is also the protagonist, even if she ''does'' crave blood as well. To add insult to injury, Mansquito begins stalking her so they can mate and start a species of freakish humansquitoes. Mind you, the female is a scientist and the male is a convict she was experimenting on. Apparently, it was too hard to swap the genders and have a male protagonist who only feeds on fruits and veggies, since, [[SarcasmMode as we all know]], [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale it's impossible for a female to stalk a male so she mate with him against his will]].

* Lampshaded in the''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' TV movie "Bender's Game", where the Professor gets angry at Igner for calling a spider a bug.\\

** One episode had a victim who was killed with Brazilian wandering spider venom and a suspect who owned a Brazilian wandering spider. The "Brazilian wandering spider" that was shown was a small black tarantula, while the real thing is gray and larger than some people's hands. Then again, the real thing is also deadly venomous and quite aggressive, so using a stand-in spider makes sense, since [[SmallTaxonomyPools most people wouldn't tell the difference anyway.]]

** 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.

->''"[[MemeticMutation NOT THE BEES.]] Also, Neal Adams? Has never seen what a bee looks like. It’s like someone just described the idea of a bee to him in really abstract terms and he took his best shot."''

* Averted in ''[[Disney/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh Winnie the Pooh]]'' where we actually get to see Pooh being stuck inside what appears to be the ''only'' accurate depiction of a wild beehive (a wall of honeycombs dangling over a pool of honey inside a hollow tree trunk) at the end of ''The Honey Tree''. Played straight in later stories, however, where all of the bees are now shown to be living in hornet nests.

-->'''Mutt''': I just got stung by one of those scorpions back there!
-->'''Indie''': How big was it?
-->'''Mutt''': Huge!
-->'''Indie''': Great.

* Portraying honeybees as repeatedly stinging without losing their stingers and thus dying. This is only happens with bumblebees, since their stingers lack barbs.

* In ''Literature/TheHauntingOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', protagonist Amy is a trainee superhero with a moth motif, under the name [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentish_Glory Kentish Glory]]. In the course of the book, she gets discouraged about the results of being for justice and fair play in an unjust and unfair world, and tries reinventing herself as a grim avenger called Death's-head Hawk, with an outfit that's all black except for the death's-head emblem. Actual death's-head hawk moths, as seen for instance on the poster for ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', have a fairly bright brown and yellow coloration. What makes this interesting is that Amy is an entomologist herself, and has been established as being picky about the accuracy of the color schemes of herself and her Moth Club teammates, so this may be deliberate on the part of the author to show that she's not thinking straight. (It may also be significant that an accurate brown-and-yellow Death's-head Hawk costume wouldn't look a great deal different from her usual -- yellow and brown -- Kentish Glory costume. Alternately, the author may have confused the death's head hawk moth with the peppered moth: a species famous for having evolved darker pigmentation during the Industrial Revolution for camouflage against soot-stained tree bark, then re-evolved paler colors once anti-pollution laws - not yet introduced in Amy's school days - cleaned up the air and tree trunks.)

* In ''Literature/TheHauntingOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', protagonist Amy is a trainee superhero with a moth motif, under the name [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentish_Glory Kentish Glory]]. In the course of the book, she gets discouraged about the results of being for justice and fair play in an unjust and unfair world, and tries reinventing herself as a grim avenger called Death's-head Hawk, with an outfit that's all black except for the death's-head emblem. Actual death's-head hawk moths, as seen for instance on the poster for ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', have a fairly bright brown and yellow coloration. What makes this interesting is that Amy is an entomologist herself, and has been established as being picky about the accuracy of the color schemes of herself and her Moth Club teammates, so this may be deliberate on the part of the author to show that she's not thinking straight. (It may also be significant that an accurate brown-and-yellow Death's-head Hawk costume wouldn't look a great deal different from her usual -- yellow and brown -- Kentish Glory costume. Alternately, the author may have confused the death's head hawk moth with the peppered moth: a species famous for having evolved darker pigmentation during the Industrial Revolution for camouflage against soot-stained tree bark, then re-evolved paler colors once anti-pollution laws cleaned up the air and tree trunks.)
* In ''Literature/ReaperMan'', a newly-emerged mayfly converses with a several-hours-senior mayfly about mortality. It's depicted as a very young insect seeking guidance from a very old one, as per the accelerated time frame of flies that are born, grow old, and die in less than a day. But ''actual'' mayflies have multi-year lifespans: they just spend the vast majority of their lives as water-dwelling, wingless nymphs. It'd be more biologically-accurate (albeit less symbolic) to portray them as a very old person receiving advice from an even older one.

* In ''Literature/TheHauntingOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', protagonist Amy is a trainee superhero with a moth motif, under the name [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentish_Glory Kentish Glory]]. In the course of the book, she gets discouraged about the results of being for justice and fair play in an unjust and unfair world, and tries reinventing herself as a grim avenger called Death's-head Hawk, with an outfit that's all black except for the death's-head emblem. Actual death's-head hawk moths, as seen for instance on the poster for ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', have a fairly bright brown and yellow coloration. What makes this interesting is that Amy is an entomologist herself, and has been established as being picky about the accuracy of the color schemes of herself and her Moth Club teammates, so this may be deliberate on the part of the author to show that she's not thinking straight. (It may also be significant that an accurate brown-and-yellow Death's-head Hawk costume wouldn't look a great deal different from her usual -- yellow and brown -- Kentish Glory costume.)

* 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 certain wasps and flies breed that way, but in fiction it's often associated with beetles or spiders (the latter of which actually have the egg-laying hole near the ''front'' of the abdomen, and wrap their eggs in a ball of silk for protection, being unable to implant their eggs inside anything).