Human-Eating Beetles

I have an alien species of giant beetles, very intelligent. They've just found Earth after a long, arduous intergalactic spaceflight, upon which they ran out of food and began eating their own eggs, so they could survive. Obviously, this only works for so long and then you're screwed. They're at the breaking point, they're desperate, they see Earth, and they plan to go down and swarm, eating all of mankind.

A clever beta pointed out that mankind probably isn't the most populous species on the planet. If you add up all the animals on Earth, you'd probably end up with a lot more meat than if you added up all the humans.

So, I need a very good reason as to why the beetles must eat all the humans and not, say, the antelope population. Some nutritional factor, I would guess, but I'd like to put the question out there. Why would the beetles focus on humans? Why the need for human flesh? They don't realize mankind will suffer, at first, so it's not a psychological reason like vengeance or anything.

(I put this in Story Research because I'm hoping for scientific thoughts, not just plot brainstorming. Hope that's okay.)

blacbird said:

We're big and slow and ubiquitous. And by far the most abundant big mammal on the planet.

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Do you have any statistics on this? I tried Googling it, but I couldn't find anything. Basically, my beta said that if you added up all the animals on the planet, versus all the humans, the animals would far outmass the humans. So if alien beetles were going to swarm and eat the population, they'd go for the animals first, because they're more numerous. I had them going for mankind because, "There's only one species on the planet with a large enough population to satisfy their hunger: man." But he found this difficult to believe.

I wonder if it would work better if I say it's because mankind is clustered together, so the beetles could swarm the cities, instead of having to spread out over the countryside, searching for life?

Your bigger scientific problem is "giant beetles". Insects are small because their physiology is such that they can't grow very big. Their respiratory systems are limited, as is their skeletal structure. The biggest beetles are only a few inches long, and although scary-looking, they are slow and no threat to anybody.

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What if the beetles aren't actually beetles, but an alien species that resembles beetles? Maybe the gravity on their world is less, allowing them to grow larger. Maybe they have specialized exoskeletons that are light and hollow, allowing them greater strength at bigger sizes. Surely there's a way to make this work. I can shrink them down some, so they're a couple of feet tall, instead of six feet tall. Would that help?

anguswalker said:

Why giant? I understand you might want them giant so they can be intelligent, but there is an interesting line of argument that intelligence does not necessarily have to derive from individually intelligent beings. Social insects like bees and ants have already developed a rudimentary sort of intelligence on Earth as a multi-individual unit and I don't see why this might not develop (in another galaxy far, far away, hopefully) so that a swarm of many thousands/millions of interconnected individuals can perform complex tasks and develop a very high degree of intelligence on a group-mind basis.

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They are a hive-mind already, so at least I'm on the right track there. The main reason for their size is so that humans can visit their spaceship. They're approaching Earth and not responding to hails, so Earth sends a team to investigate and see whether they're hostile or not. The team needs room to stand up and walk around as they explore the ship.

I could make the beetles smaller than man-sized and have more than one of them attack at once, that's actually a really good idea. I could make the ship more hive-like, as well, instead of being similar to a human spaceship. Somehow it never occurred to me to make the ship alien. (Duh!) But it still needs to be large enough for humans to comfortably walk around, so the beetles can't be terribly small. Maybe a couple of feet tall? As I said above, if they're not actually beetles, but are an alien species that resembles beetles, made possible by lighter gravity and different anatomy, it should be plausible, no?

The beetles don't realize humans are individual, instead of having a hive-mind, so they don't realize they'll be harming anyone by swarming and eating people. Once they realize, they'll leave Earth alone.

So, now my questions are:

1. Is man the most populous species on the planet?
2. If not, why would they choose mankind instead of animals?
3. Will it work if I make them smaller and not actually beetles, but merely resembling them?

Reziac said:

Maybe your beetles are actually something like Replicators -- small in the individual, large as need be en mass (possibly with a group intelligence based on that mass connecting with each other).

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Interesting idea, thanks. I'll give it some thought the next time I edit that novel.

I changed the story so the beetles are large, but not human-sized. Maybe fist-sized. There's probably insects nearly as big in the Amazon.

There's twenty or thirty million of them on the ship--it's a generational colony ship designed to save as many as possible from their extinct homeworld. I never mentioned how long it would take them to swarm the planet, just that they would eventually eat every human and animal in their path.

They don't necessarily want to colonize Earth, but their food stocks are gone and they're dying of starvation. They need to eat and Earth is the closest planet with a viable food source. They're not planning to conquer the planet. In fact, once they learn that humans are intelligent, they decide to sacrifice themselves, rather than kill mankind. They never make it down to the surface, so things like oxygen and gravity won't be an issue.

I don't actually specify how large the beetles are in the novel. The humans find an access shaft that's the size of a fist, through which a beetle could fit through, and I said that several of them swarm up one of the humans when they're attacking, but that's as close as I got to saying how big they are. As for the ship, I said the rooms are barely large enough for a man to stand up in. I think I'll go back and shrink things a little, make it more claustrophobic. Large enough they can move around, but a bit cramped. Perhaps if I make the corridors round, the beetles could travel along the walls and ceiling, too, which makes it more plausible for them to be bigger. (Doesn't it?)