A ladybird is a small, round beetle with bright red or orange wing covers decorated with black spots. Americans usually call them ladybugs, though they're actually beetles, not bugs.

Gardeners love ladybirds because they eat aphids, tiny pests that destroy plants by sucking their juices. A single ladybird can eat 5,000 aphids in its lifetime. Watch a ladybird hunting on a rose bush: it marches along leaves and stems, grabbing aphids with its jaws. This makes ladybirds one of nature's best pest controllers.

When threatened, a ladybird releases a yellow fluid from its leg joints that smells bad and tastes worse to predators. Those bright colors serve as a warning: “Don't eat me, I taste terrible!” This defense works so well that some harmless insects have evolved to look like ladybirds to fool predators.

Not all ladybirds are red with black spots. Some are yellow, orange, or even black with red spots. The number of spots doesn't indicate age, as many people think. It identifies the species.