While many beetles are rounded on top, the diabolical ironclad is flat and low to the ground, University of California, Irvine, materials scientist David Kisailus tells Science News’ Maria Temming. That makes it hard to squish, since the pressure is distributed over the whole shell. Compression experiments conducted by Kisailus and colleagues showed that the exoskeleton held up against up to the crushing force of 39,000 times the beetle’s body weight. Read More