When I was waiting for my brothers to come out of school, I saw lots of rusty bits on the fence. When I looked closely, they were not rusty bits but tiny spiky orange and black insects. I took a photo on my mum's phone. I used Google Lens to find out what it was. The app breaks the photo into tiny pixels and searches the internet for a picture that has the same pattern of pixels. It is very clever. Google lens told me the insects were Harlequin Ladybug Larvae. I looked all the way along the fence. When I looked closely, I saw lots of ladybugs. There were black ones with red spots, red ones with black spots, orange ones with black spots, and orange ones with cream spots. Some had two spots, and some had more. This ladybug was my favourite. It had the most spots, 18, nine on each side. It is symmetrical. You could draw a line down the middle and the two sides are identical. I counted one the spots on one side and multiplied by two. This ladybug is sometimes called the Halloween ladybug because all the ladybugs can look so different, like they are wearing costumes, and they come in Autumn. Last year, I studied mini beasts at school. Maths can help you identify mini beasts. You count the number of body bits, legs, wings, and antenna. It is fun.
