Ladybug (Coccinella septempunctata)

I’d like to introduce my relatives Ladybugs. Ladybugs, ladybirds, or lady beetles, or mariquita, or marienkäfer or joaninha, or coccinelle – whatever one calls them – are favored by farmers as voracious pest-eaters. We use to hate all kind of pests. Natural pests, when we born insects, or social pests like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism und so weiter, when we born human being that desire to fly and to be free.

Many people are fond of ladybugs because of their colorful, spotted appearance. But farmers love them for their appetite. Most ladybugs voraciously consume plant-eating insects, such as aphids, and in doing so they help to protect crops. Ladybugs lay hundreds of eggs in the colonies of aphids and other plant-eating pests. When they hatch, the ladybug larvae immediately begin to feed. By the end of its three-to-six-week life, a ladybug may eat some 5,000 aphids. You can see that ladybugs are so important for the plantations health, when they are insects, and social health too, when they are human. All of us must be implacable with pests and to fight hard against then if our desire is a world without war, hunger, poorness, prejudice and other kind of social pests.

Ladybugs are also called lady beetles or, in Europe, ladybird beetles (in Brazil they are called Joaninhas). There are about 5,000 different species of these insects, and not all of them have the same appetites. A few ladybugs prey not on plant-eaters but on plants. The Mexican bean beetle and the squash beetle are destructive pests that prey upon the crops mentioned in their names.

Ladybugs appear as half-spheres, tiny, spotted, round or oval-shaped domes. They have short legs and antennae. Their distinctive spots and attractive colors are meant to make them unappealing to predators. Ladybugs can secrete a fluid from joints in their legs which gives them a foul taste. A threatened ladybug may both play dead and secrete the unappetizing substance to protect itself. Their coloring is likely a reminder to any animals that have tried to eat their kind before: “I taste awful”. Sometimes human ladybugs must to reminder their predators that they (we) are so awful if necessary, specially to protect ourselves and to defend our ideas. Don’t make blind yourself. Our appearance can be fragile, but our soul is so strong. Ladybugs and people like ladybugs are so necessary for the humanity (Source: National Geographic and Coccinelle).