What Eats Ladybugs ?

What Eats Ladybugs ?

The ladybugs are pretty beneficial for the garden and crops as they eat all the harmful insects therein. This helps us to protect leaves and foliage in the environment without resorting to the use of pesticides.

The ladybug, which is a predator, keeps the population of its prey under control in a natural way. Ladybugs can eat nearly fifty to sixty aphids in one single day. They have an active appetite to satisfy. They eat a wide variety of bugs like scales, insects, aphids, mealy bugs, mites, and leaf hoppers. These are some of the most common damaging insect varieties found in the United States. The lady bugs are also known as lady beetles or ladybird beetles in the United States.

The ladybug has a natural instinct to help protect itself from the predators. Some of the common predators of the lady bugs are all kinds of birds and the lacewing larvae which eat the larvae of the ladybug. The birds do try to eat the ladybug, but they are usually not ingested as the bugs have an ability to secrete a chemical that is foul tasting. This makes the ladybug unappetizing to the birds. As a result, ladybugs taste quite bad to their predators and do not make the best of food for them. This defense mechanism is often employed by ladybirds to protect themselves from becoming a meal to a predator.

Sometimes, when they know that a predator is close at hand, ladybugs just fall down on the ground or leaf as though they are dead. This act confuses the predator, and it just moves on to some other insect to eat.

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What Eats Ladybugs