Red Milkweed Beetles
Here is a Red Milkweed Beetle couple I met while they were in the throes of passion. These are fairly commonly found on milkweeds, especially the Common Milkweed. Though not particularly large, their red bodies with black spots and long black antenna makes them stand out pretty well on the mostly-green milkweed plants they're usually found on. The red is considered aposematic coloring in that it warns would-be predators that these beetles are at least bad tasting and potentially poisonous. It achieves this despite limiting it's exposure to the milky latex substance in milkweeds. They will bite through a leaf's vein first, impeding the flow of the latex "down vein" of the leaf, and then they'll do their eating down there where they don't encounter a lot of the latex. (Apparently the latex could harden over their mouths, so if they get latex on themselves they quickly try and scrape it off.) Although females are considered to be slightly larger, the males ...