Your favorite red candies and lipsticks might be colored with crushed bugs.

The cochineal insect, known scientifically as Dactylopius coccus, is a tiny scale insect native to Mexico and South America. These bugs spend their lives clinging to prickly pear cacti, sucking on the plant's juices. To stop birds and ants from eating them, they produce carminic acid, which is a very strong red pigment.To make the dye, workers carefully brush the insects off the cacti and dry them in the sun. Once dried, the bugs are crushed into a fine powder and mixed with minerals like aluminum or calcium to create the final color. It takes a staggering 70,000 insects just to make one pound of this red dye.People have used this bug-based color for a very long time. The Aztec and Maya civilizations were experts at making carmine dye hundreds of years before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Today, Peru is the world's largest producer, exporting thousands of tons of the dye every year.You can find carmine in everything from strawberry yogurt and fruit juices to expensive lipsticks and eye shadows. On food labels, it is often listed as 'cochineal extract' or 'E120.' While it might sound gross to eat bugs, carmine is actually preferred by many companies because it stays bright and doesn't fade under hot lights or heat like artificial dyes do.