cochineal a crimson dye used as a food colouring, is made from the dried, pulverized bodies of an insect, Dactylopius coccus, which is a parasite on cactus plants in America. When the female insect has mated, it settles on the cactus and becomes permanently fixed there, sheds all its limbs and swells into a round lump which looks more like an excrescence on the cactus than an insect. (The Latin word coccus means berry.) Several other kinds of insect behave thus, one of them being the kermes bug which is native to the Old World and is also used to made a red dye.
