Insect Picture of the Day

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What’s the difference between ladybugs and aphids? People don’t buy aphids in boxes of a thousand to put on their garden. Do you see this, people? Do you really see? When the aphids get serious, the ladybugs get weaponized.

Sandra Tayler sends in this picture, in which we look right into the barrel of the ladybug gun. Or grenade? It’s more of a bomb, really. Except it’s full of sentient ordnance. And bombs don’t have barrels. And saying “in which we look right into the fuse of the sentient ladybug bomb” just sounds weird.

Anyway! Each beetle in this picture is an aphid eating machine, a six-legged terror ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting aphid populace.

Well, maybe a little suspecting. We did tell them it was on.

If you look carefully, you can see several ladybugs flipped upside-down in this picture. This is because ladybugs are shipped in cryogenic stasis. This is the only safe way to ship sentient killer robots. (It also saves you hundreds of dollars in tiny little dramamines. Did you know that a carsick ladybug can throw up six times it’s own body weight?)

Sandra says she opened the box right in the fridge to take this picture. Hold tight, folks, this isn’t the last we’ve seen of these ladybugs.

Thanks, Sandra!