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Sticker of Sinuate lady beetle
Bug card No. 3864 of 4,939

Sinuate lady beetle

Hippodamia sinuata

The sinuate lady beetle is a small ladybird from North America. It has pale spots on the shield behind its head. A black line runs down the middle of its back, where its two wing cases meet.

Lives in
Western North America, from Alaska down to California and New Mexico, and also in Oceania
Length
4.3 to 5.8 mm (0.17 to 0.23 in)
Top speed
about 29 km/h (18 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot hurt you.
What does it eat?
Like its ladybird cousins, it hunts aphids, the tiny bugs that suck juice from plants.
For real!Photo of Sinuate lady beetle
Picture by Chloe and Trevor Van Loon. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Sinuate lady beetle about 5.8 mm long (0.23 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould fly across a whole football pitch in 13 secondsmoves 1400 times its own body length every second

How big is Sinuate lady beetle compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is only about 4 to 6 millimetres long, about the size of a grain of rice.

2

Each wing case has a broad stripe on it.

3

There are three kinds of it, and each lives in a different part of North America, from the cold north down to sunny California.

you asked

Most asked questions about Sinuate lady beetle

?Is the sinuate lady beetle dangerous?

No. It is a small, harmless ladybird.

?How big is the sinuate lady beetle?

About 4 to 6 millimetres long, a little smaller than a fingernail.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Hippodamia sinuata
Named by
Mulsant, 1850
Group
Ladybirds
Family
Coccinellidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Coccinellidae
Lives on
North America, Australia and Oceania

Where the facts come from

  1. Hippodamia sinuata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Chloe and Trevor Van Loon. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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