We have a home Pholcus phalangioides living under our kitchen cupboard, who occasionally emerges when they’ve caught something in their cobweb. In this case, a ladybug, who has been trapped under there for the past day.
The spider is clearly fang deep in a gap under the beetle’s armor, but what adds a frisson of horror to the scene is that the beetle was still alive, it’s mouthparts and forelimbs slowly writhing as Mlle. Pholcus sups on her fluids.
Looks like an Asian lady beetle to me.
Yes, colloquially called a ladybug in these parts.
Ladybugs are red. You Minnesotans are strange. (A lot of people from around here, Iowa, call them ladybugs, too. : )
Asian lady beetles are in fact ladybugs, which come in over 5000 different species. They come in many patterns of black with yellow/ orange/ red.
Twice-stabbed ladybugs are black with two red spots, and our native two spotted lady beetles are orange with black spots, just like the Asian ladybug. There is a red and black 7 spotted ladybug, but the most common natives in MN are both orange with black spots.
Just saw James Lindsay embracing the Wailing Wall while he’s in Israel on X. Crazy how this is the same guy who wrote “Everybody Is Wrong About God” a decade ago.
I see the Asian ladybeetles more than any other species nowdays. They bite, they stink, they move into my house for the winter, and they like to get into my food and drink. It is wonderful that they make a nice meal for a house spider!
That spider’s called a daddy long-legs in Australia, and no, Americans there is no point telling me daddy long-legs is something completely different. X-D
Get used to the idea the whole world doesn’t use your local terminology.
https://australian.museum/learn/animals/spiders/daddy-long-legs-spider/
In the UK, such a beetle would be called a ladybird. Gardeners like them because they eat aphids.
Coccinella californica is the native ladybug beetle here. Most folks here say ‘ladybug’ for short, and ‘ladybird’-sayers that I have heard are from the east or south of the US. Ours seldom if ever has any spots on its vermillion elytra, but it sometimes has a black racing stripe down the middle.