Thistle tortoise beetle
The thistle tortoise beetle is a round green beetle that looks like a tiny turtle. Its wide, flat shell covers its head and legs, so from above you can hardly see them. It lives on thistles and munches their leaves.
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Fun facts
Its shell works like a shield that bends, so the jaws of enemies cannot get underneath.
Its name rubiginosa means rusty, because dead beetles turn brown.
Farmers in some countries use it on purpose to eat weedy thistles.
It protects its eggs with a special covering it makes itself.
Most asked questions about Thistle tortoise beetle
?Why is it called a tortoise beetle?
Its round shell covers its whole body like the shell of a tortoise.
?Is the thistle tortoise beetle harmful?
No. It is harmless to people, and it even helps farmers by eating weedy thistles.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cassida rubiginosa
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Chrysomelidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Chrysomelidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
Where the facts come from
- Thistle tortoise beetle (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Francisco Welter-Schultes. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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