Talk:Dynastinae

message: Strength grows with the cross sectional area of an animal, while weight grows with the volume. Therefore to say that a human with the strength of this beetle could lift a tank is a gross misrepresentation of the relative strengths of the two species.
As it is, a Rhino beetle having its size multiplied to that of a human and having his strength multiplied by the same FACTOR would probably be unable to move. We are actually a little stronger for our size than a rhino beetle is. An ant would instantly collapse and fall apart if the same thing was done to it.
If a human was shrunk down to the size of a rhino beetle and our strength was divided by the same FACTOR, we'd be able to lift thousands of times our own weight.
That's why the whole "strongest for their weight/size" measurement is completely flawed.
As it is, polarbears, silverbacks, and bengal tigers, and even chimpanzees and grizzly bears completely rule in this category. If any of these was shrunk down to the size of even a mouse, they'd be able to lift many thousands of times their own weight.
This is why I completely dispute the strength claim of this article and similar claims on articles about ants.
The claim is made due to a bad understanding of the math involved by people who oversimplify topics to sensationalize them and make them appeal to larger audiences.
Unless someone can make a good counter argument, the stat needs to be clarified or removed.
You are absolutely correct. I made a similar comment of my own. The stat mentioned does need to be removed, or at least adjoined with your argument.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mgblair (talk • contribs) 00:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Strength vs. Humans

message: I've removed the following strange text. Some parts are weird - duplicitous means deceitful, how could the beetle lift a human hand? and is the Ox Beetle relevant here. If the text is OK then it can go back in.
== Movement ==
During common movement, the Strategus aloeus species pulls itself along with duplicitous claws attached to each foot.  When lifting heavy things, say, a human hand, these clawed tarsi become of little importance, and instead, points on the tibia which extend beyond the tarsi become operative in the load-bearing bearing process.  The tarsi at this point curve underneath the tibia and support little if any weight at all.  Picture with clearly visible tibial points: ''
They also have huge, orange, jointed wings that fold up underneath their elytra. Extended they look like pterydactl wings.
- Adrian Pingstone 07:52, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Strange text

message: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AnimalRecords/ 
A link to a random site which simply says "Strongest Animal - The rhinoceros beetle can lift 850 times its own weight." without explaining their methodology or how they even came to that conclusion is not proof. I guess they copied straight out of the Guinness World Records site, but I can't even find the claim there, due my own ineptitude or the crap design of the site. 68.161.202.67 (talk) 10:59, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I worry about the "strongest animal" statement, as another page on the Mite states that "The tropical species Archegozetes longisetosus is one of the strongest animals in the world, relative to its mass (100 μg): It lifts up to 1182 times its own weight, over five times more than would be expected of such a minute animal (Heethoff & Koerner 2007)."  Maybe that page is wrong.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.171.196.156 (talk) 09:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Only real number i could find for rhinobeetles strenght was 100 times bodyweight (http://jeb.biologists.org/content/199/3/609.full.pdf)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.155.227.4 (talk) 11:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed 850 to 100 and added your source. --Kurt Jansson (talk) 20:57, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Strongest animals 

message: So I just got into an arguement with a lunchable because it had the nerve to say this beetle can lift more than a Gorilla. However, I can't really imagine that being the case. Their logic for saying such a claim was that the beetle can life up, as the wiki says, 850x it's own weight, but if their only reasoning is the multiples of it's own weight, than of course a smaller animal is going to outclass a vastly heavier one. Can anyone find any confirmation about this at all because I personally don't think that this Rhino Beetle could even support something a lot heavier than maybe a small tree simply because of it's structural design. 71.49.53.75 (talk) 23:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Rhino Bettle vs Gorilla

message: My concern with this article is in the introduction, in the paragraph that starts with "An amazing fact about rhino beetles is that they are the strongest animals on the planet, proportionally." If one is to speak of proportions of strength of the beetle, one must also mention the relation between its surface area and volume. Think of this example: You have a 2x2x2 sized cube. The area of this cube will be 24, and the volume will be 8. If you quadruple the size of the cube to 4x4x4, the surface area will be 96, and the volume will be 64. Quadruple it again to 8x8x8, and the area will be 384 and the volume 512. Clearly, the volume increases at a much faster rate than does area. The same would apply to a beetle that is "proportionately" the strongest creature on the planet. If it were to increase in size to be the size of a full grown human, it would be so heavy it would likely not be able to pick itself up.
Mgblair (talk) 00:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken this out. "Amazing" doesn't belong on Wikipedia - who is amazed? - and there were no sources. Crucially, it's not even true any more, as far as I can tell. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 12:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. And according to this article at the world's favourite newspaper, quoting Dr Rob Knell from Queen Mary, University of London, QUOTE 'There is a mite that is stronger, but it isn't an insect. UNQUOTE (the headline describes the horned dung beetle as the world's strongest insect rather than animal). It's possible that I've made a huge error and that the horned dung beetle described in the aforementioned actually is the rhinoceros beetle (although the first source describes the former outclassing the latter), but even if this is the case they're all outclassed by mites. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 12:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

text: No, it appears that the rhino beetle is Oryctes rhinoceros and the aforementioned honrned dung beetle is Onthophagus taurus, and that these are separate species. The rhino beetle is more well-known and gets the good press; the horned dung beetle is the, er, atrum equus. Thank God Wikipedia allows non-specialists to wreak havoc on specialist topics. I'd have nothing to do otherwise. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 12:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: It's not one on the thorax and one higher on the thorax.. that wouldn't allow any articulation. It's one on the thorax and one on the head. It makes a fine pincer for grappling in combat.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 01:40, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Horns