What is Life

The rhinoceros beetle we caught in mid-July has died.

We caught a male and female pair in the mountains. The female died first, and the male followed shortly after.

At first, they would eat three insect jellies in a single night, but recently, not even one would be gone. They must have become an old grandpa and grandma. Thank you for your hard work. My son and I buried them in the neighborhood.

It was only about two months that we spent with them. During that time, my son learned that rhinoceros beetles are nocturnal, that there are boys and girls among them, that their body shapes differ between boys and girls, and that he must not forget to give them jelly before going to bed at night.

I repeat, it was only two months. It is said that the lifespan of an adult rhinoceros beetle is two to three months. You could say they lived out their lives almost completely.

Whether it is a rhinoceros beetle or any other insect, life is life.

Have you ever seriously faced the question of whether there is a difference in the weight of lives?

Perhaps you think that since there is no single, unique answer, there is no point in facing it. However, I believe that for questions of this kind, it is important to keep thinking about them. And I also believe we should face them. After all, we sustain our own lives every day by taking the lives of others.

Rhinoceros beetles are nocturnal. When we wake up in the morning and look, they are burrowed in the soil. They eat and are active during the night.

Because of that, we probably only found out that the female had died a little while after she actually passed away. After all, she was in the soil. When I thought, 'I haven't seen her lately,' and rummaged through the soil a bit, I found the female with her head and body separated.

It is a fleeting life. They only appear before people in that cool form for one summer. Have rhinoceros beetles and stag beetles been observed by children for thousands of years like this, teaching them important things?

I have heard that keeping pets is good for education because it teaches children the importance of life. However, one must seriously face the fact that it is a single life. It means 'making a child face the moment a pet's life is lost' 'in order to' 'teach the child the importance of life'.

Will that really 'necessarily' work 'positively'? Are we really 'teaching the importance of life'? Aren't we just 'feeling like we are teaching the importance of life'?

We caught the rhinoceros beetle that was living naturally in the mountains and brought it here. If we hadn't, it would have lived a different life in the mountains. Setting aside whether or not to call a rhinoceros beetle's life a 'life'.

Regardless of whether an answer can be found, I felt it was necessary to think about it. Even though my thoughts are not yet organized.