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Animal Themes
Insects
Invertebrates

Ladybugs

Ladybugs
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   9.48

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    mites, contrast, species, temperate, underside, unique, easily, beetles, attach, state, significant, often, length, such, cause, throughout
     content words:    United States, New Hampshire, New York

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Other Languages
     Spanish: Las Catarinas

Ladybugs   
1     Do you know what your state insect is? In the United States, there are six states that like the ladybug (or ladybird beetle, lady beetle, or ladybird) so much that they have chosen it as their state insect! The six states are: Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee. The only insect that is even more popular than the ladybug is the honeybee - 16 states have chosen it as their state insect.
 
2     Ladybugs are common insects that we often find in gardens throughout tropical and temperate regions. With a body length of less than 0.5 inches, ladybugs are easily recognizable by their unique hemispherical shapes and brightly colored outfits. Just imagine this: you slice a pea-sized ball from left to right and neatly place the top half on a table. You color the top half in orange and decorate it with a couple of black dots. Then, you glue a tiny head with a pair of antennae to the front of the hemisphere and attach three pairs of short legs to the underside. Voila, you just made a nine-spotted ladybug!
 
3     There are over 5,000 different ladybug species in the world. While farmers welcome most types of ladybugs visiting their fields wholeheartedly, they dislike the Mexican bean beetle and the squash ladybug. These two ladybug species do not eat pests (such as aphids, scales, and mites) as their other relatives do. In contrast, Mexican bean beetles and squash ladybugs are pests themselves and cause significant damage to farmers' crops!
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