If you see some of these in your garden or landscaping, do not squash, spray, or otherwise kill them.
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| It's one type of "assassin bug", which preys on other insects and which can help prevent landscape damage. They patrol all day long, like an insect version of a police force. |
That particular species of
beneficial insect is known as a "
milkweed assassin bug", but I see them all over our yard, not just on the milkweed plants.
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| Milkweed. I wonder if the bugs attained their bright orange color for the purposes of camouflage. |
They eat stink bugs and aphids, among many other pests. The
Texas state insect is actually the Monarch butterfly, but anything that eats stink bugs (native or
invasive) is a close runner up in my book.
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| If you look closely, you'll see a long proboscis tucked under the front of its body. That's the deadly apparatus that siphons the guts out of other bugs. Yummy. |
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