Ladybirds know how good they look, and they don’t keep it to themselves
The ladybird gets the first part of its name from Our Lady, The Lady, Mary. Its spots – seven, if you are in Europe – symbolise Mary’s seven sorrows, its red shell the cloak she wears sometimes, when she is feeling passionate or loving, or devoted to her son, or, when she’s in a particularly generous mood, devoted to all of humanity.
Ladybirds come from the coccinellid family of beetles, which comes from the Latin for scarlet. They were named by Pierre André Latreille, a priest who had grown up an orphan and was thrown into a dungeon during the French Revolution. He was released because he recognised a rare species of beetle. A physician had come to inspect the prisoners, and found Latreille preoccupied by an insect. The story is about to sound like a bible passage written by AI. The insect was very rare, Latreille told the physician. It was a “red-necked bacon beetle”. The physician took the beetle to a local physician, 15 years old, who, impressed, used his connections to get Latreille released from prison. Within a month, every other inmate was dead from “a notorious killing frenzy”. (As they say: God loves beetles.)
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