Cochineals are tiny bugs that live on prickly pear cactuses. The acid in their guts makes a red dye used in textiles, cosmetics, and foods like M&Ms and Yoplait yogurt. Indigenous people across ...

Chiggers are a type of mite, or arthropod, in the family Trombiculidae. They are extremely small red bugs that measure about 1/60th of an inch — barely visible with the naked eye — and you'd ...

To make it, workers grind up thousands of the tiny bugs. Then they mix the deep red powder with water. Nearly 70,000 bugs go into each pound of cochineal, or carmine, coloring.