Nuttall's blister beetle
Nuttall's blister beetle shines in bright purple and green, like a little jewel. It stands out clearly on the green prairie plants where it lives. Its body can make a juice that keeps hungry animals away.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It is one of more than 3,000 kinds of blister beetles.
Farm animals can get sick if they eat hay with these beetles hidden inside.
Its babies can only grow up in the nests of bees that live in the ground. That keeps the number of beetles from getting too big.
Sometimes a group of them eats a farmer's alfalfa or soybean plants.
Most asked questions about Nuttall's blister beetle
?What does Nuttall's blister beetle eat?
Grown-ups eat green plants such as alfalfa and clover. The babies eat bee babies and bee food in bee nests.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Lytta nuttalli
- Named by
- Say, 1824
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Meloidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Meloidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Lytta nuttalli (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 USFWS Mountain-Prairie ; Photo Credit: Laura Hubers / USFWS. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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