At Least I'm Not A Beetle

Unfortunately for everyone else, I begin most of my conversations these days stating, “So I was listening to this podcast…” at which point I’ll bring up a generalized talking point regarding mirror touch synesthesia or Limetown or surrogacy in Israel.  Naturally, once I’ve opened a topic for discussion on which I am only marginally informed, the sad soul listening to me will ask a question clarifying Lizzie Borden’s motives for slaughtering her father and step-mother, at which point I’ll have to admit that don’t remember all the details, just the gory or inappropriate ones.  

I have my favorite podcasts – The Moth, The Memory Palace, Invisibilia, Modern Love, This American Life, and Stuff You Should Know, but in the last several months, I’ve begun listening to Radio Lab with increased consistency.  Their Valentine’s Day episode, which I only recently got to a month late, was about beetles, of all things.  Romantic, I know.  But I was surprisingly fascinated by the discussion. 

These beetles, Deathwatch Beetles, have a pretty bleak life ahead of them.  About 1/4 of an inch long at full maturity, they are relatively insignificant and don’t venture far or experience much in their limited lifespans.  After spending up to a DECADE eating themselves free from the wooden timber surroundings in which they are hatched, these beetles will pupate (a truly abhorrent word) and emerge as mature beetles.  At this point, the beetles’ sole purpose is to mate, and like all living organisms, pass on their genes.  These male beetles have a startlingly short life as an “adult” and as they do not eat at this stage, they will starve to death within a matter of weeks.  (Again, the perfect Valentine’s tale.) To add insult to injury, they are also mostly blind.  In order to locate a female beetle in the nearby vicinity, male beetles will knock their head against the timber on which they reside in a quick succession of five or six taps.  If a female is near, she will respond with five or six taps of her own, and they’ll play this coy little hot-and-cold tapping game until they locate each other.  Again, the female's main purpose at this stage is to lay eggs and pass on her genes.  However, scientists have found that the female beetles can be quite selective in terms of with which beetles they will choose to mate, even when there are no other options available.  Sometimes the female beetles will even die without passing on their genes if the current candidate(s) are unimpressive and too scrawny.  I mean, dramatic much?

But also...how embarrassingly relevant is this?  The parallels between the mating of the Deathwatch beetles and dating as a human did not escape me. 

Sole purpose having reached maturity as an adult = passing on genes? Check.  
Limited prospects? Check.  
 
Females remaining staunchly selective despite limited prospects? Check. 
 
Selective females willing to die without mating because of limited prospects? Check.

However, I am (fortunately) not a Rita Skeeter beetle, and for that I am grateful.  So while dating may be dumb and frustrating and positively bleak, I’m not blind, I didn’t have to pupate, and I’m allowed to eat as an adult. 

So, to sum up: no matter how bleak my your dating situation may appear, perhaps it helps to remember that someone (or more appropriately, something) probably has it worse than you.  #perspective 

(But also don’t be surprised if I talk about beetles on my next date.  Or polyamory.  Or medieval treatments of staph infections.  There’s obviously more quasi-formulated discussion topics where this comes from.)  

PS. FLIRTING: