CREATURE NUMBER THREE!!!!!
have you ever heard that red m&ms and other red foods are dyed with a bug? Or that lip sticks are dyed using bugs?
![[Image: original.jpeg]](https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/387573030/original.jpeg)
fun fact: that bug is native to my area! Cochineal (genus Dactylopius) is a group scale bugs thats native to the american southwest, mexico, and south america. They cling onto prickly pear cacti (genus Opuntia) and have piercing/sucking mouth parts that they use to drink the fluids inside the cactus. As nymphs, they excrete a white waxy substance that helps protect them from the sun and evaporation. After finding a cactus to feed on, they pretty much just stay in the same spot except if alarmed or to spread out for mating purposes. In order to spread to other cacti, they move to the edge of the cactus pad and let the wind pick them up with the waxy filament they make and then hope to land on another cactus.
These guys have been used for dye by indigenous peoples to dye fabric and later became a popular export in the 16th century. The dye comes from carminic acid, which the cochineal bug evolved to deter predation from other insects. The carminic acid can be extracted and then mixed with aluminum or calcium salts, creating carmine dye, also listed as natural red 4 or E120 on ingredients lists.
I jumped out of my car in an in n out dive through to get pictures of the population i found. whats neat is that different species of cochineal have preferred host species. the in n out had 2 different prickly pear species in the same patch, and yet only one of those species was covered in cochineal!