Since childhood and to an extreme old age the ladybug remains for everyone a being lovely and giving rise only to pleasant associations. There is a lot of explanations for it also in the scientific world, and in the world of myths and legends to which, actually, this spotty insect is also obliged to the name.
Perhaps, any insect was not as useful as all the known ladybug for the person. Red, yellow, green, black – entomologists contain over 4 thousand species of ladybugs. It is not surprising what since the most ancient times of people tries to use this bug to itself in the help. The ladybug keeps many secrets about herself, but some of them now nevertheless are solved. So, scientists established that for protection against natural enemies the ladybugs are capable to produce substance a cantharidine in small (in comparison with poisonous insects) quantities. Thanks to a cantharidine, medicinal properties were attributed to ladybugs. Ancient Slavs, for example, rubbed with live ladybugs gums of painful teeth – helped. As medicine for a toothache of ladybugs was even reserved for the winter – thanks to the same cantharidine the bugs perfectly remain in conditions under which ordinary insects "vanish". In the Middle Ages the doctors prepared from ladybugs special extracts on alcohol and a plaster against abscesses and furuncles! Well the ladybug and in the present proved. These bugs are considered as one of the best fighters against the angriest agricultural wrecker – a plant louse. Besides, the ladybug is the active fighter of vegetable and web pincers. Such useful qualities probably affected also a name with which people presented this pretty creation. Slavic names of a ladybug are connected with characters of a mythological plot "a wedding of the Sun". Because and it is impossible to kill the "bride" dressed in red, it is impossible and to leave on the earth – all will burn down ("a ladybug, depart on the sky"). To the central character of a ceremony of a marriage of the sun there correspond names of a ladybug in other languages: the God's girl in Bulgarian, the bride in Macedonian, the wife or the orphan in Polish. With distribution of Christianity also ancient beliefs were transformed. The name of a spotty bug began to be connected with Virgin Mary. In the English-speaking countries the ladybug is called by ladybird, ladybug or lady beetle. The word "lady" uniting these names just also means Virgin Mary. The most widespread version of the modern name of a ladybug indicates the cattle belonging to god or a certain divine character: dievo karvyte on Lithuanian, vaca domnului on Romanian, bozhja an ovchitsa on Serbo-Croatian, bete a bon Dieu ("god's animal") in French. A cow in this case – realization of the general model of correlation of insects from scotomas.