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The
Cochineal Insect: A Bug That Changed History
By Peter D. Goldfinch
As
you trudge over your estate in the hills of Pine Brook, look at the often
neglected underside of the Prickly Pear Cactus pads. Note that
some plants have whitish blobs reminiscent of a spitball, from the size of a
pinhead up to one centimeter in diameter, in some cases merging with
neighbors to form a continuous mass covering the underside of the cactus
pad. You are a lucky observer of colonies of the Cochineal insect, or
Dactylopius Cocci (whence the word cochineal). (See photo).
 The fluffy white
protective covering is composed of waxy filaments overlying and secreted by
a colony of carmine-colored, segmented insects 0.1 to 0.2 inches long,
without appendages, easily discernible with your microscope. The reddish
pigment contained within is an anthroquinone, which apparently protects
against parasites, rendering the cochineal free of its own bugs, in contrast
to other parasite-ridden scale bugs. You are seeing the females, many with
their proboscises inserted into the cactus, sucking its vital juices. The
colorless males are almost too small to see, and fly about pathetically,
looking for females with which to mate. When eggs laid by the females
hatch, their offspring are carried by the wind on gossamer wings of waxy
filament to other cacti, to start their own careers of spinning, sucking,
mating and egg laying.
Cochineal
belongs to a group of scale insects and mealybugs, horrid creatures which
you must have noted sometime in your life, clinging like limpets to some of
your house plants or tender branches of favorite shrubs, sucking out their
vital fluids and bringing death to your garden. Not wanting to be negative,
we must note that several of these bugs have proven useful to Homo Sap.:
Cochineal has been the source of a beautiful scarlet dye and food coloring;
Kermes yields a reddish dye dull and faded in comparison to cochineal, used
in the Middle Ages and found in Neolithic cave paintings and the wrappings
of Egyptian mummies; Lac Scale Bugs exude a resin used in making shellac;
Trabutina mannitara or manna, is a scale insect found feeding on
Tamarisks growing by the Red Sea and in Sinai, and extruding a nutritious
substance described in Exodus 16:31 as “like coriander seed,
white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.”
Modern scientists speculate that a massive swarm of manna bugs had invaded
the Sinai during that time, allowing for large quantities of their bodies
and secretions to be “harvested” for breakfast each morning, moistened by
the night’s dew (hence, honeydew). Others speculate that the Jewish nation
survived on this substance during their trek thru the Sinai desert, although
forty years of manna made for a monotonous diet, leading the Israelites to
complain that “…we have naught but this manna to look to.” However, I
digress. Back to the cactus patch.
Without getting
it impaled on cactus thorns, press a fingertip against one of these
fuzzballs and mash it. (See color spot in photo). The brilliant red insect
bodies staining your finger are the source of cochineal dye, used for
thousands of years in the Americas for coloration. By the 14th
century the Aztecs and Incas had whole agricultural systems based on
cactus-grown cochineal, apparently valued by them as much as gold.
When Cortez
landed in the New World around 1520, he was amazed to see the Aztec ruler
Montezuma and other nobles clad in robes dyed a brilliant, vivid red, and
was transfixed as he gazed at the native women’s hands and breasts dyed in
the same vivid color. He found bags of dried cochineal which had been sent
as tribute to Montezuma, and shipped them back to
Spain, where it was almost instantly in
high demand. By 1600 cochineal had grown second only to silver and gold as
the most valuable imports from the New World.
Our friends the Pirates accordingly took a lively interest, in the 1620s
attacking Spanish galleons with cochineal cargos as well as those carrying
silver and gold.
Spain was able to
maintain a cochineal monopoly for over 200 years after the insect’s
discovery, since most Europeans had misconceptions (cactus fruit, etc.)
about the source of the dye. The Spanish developed an elaborate
disinformation campaign to encourage these erroneous beliefs, at the same
time prohibiting export of live cochineal insects and preventing foreigners
from visiting production areas in the Americas. In 1704, the Dutch amateur
scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek used microscopic lenses to analyze dried
cochineal and determine that it consisted entirely of female scale insects.
Many people found this unbelievable.
The discovery of
the use of mordants, tin chloride in this case, to enhance adherence of dyes
to fabric led to the invention by Cornelius Dribble of a brilliant scarlet
red dye. Cromwell used this in 1645 to dye the uniforms of his New Model
Army, known thereafter as the “Redcoats”. Later, there were scarlet coats
for Canadian Mounties. And surely you know of the Roman Catholic Cardinals
robes, the breeches of the Hungarian Hussars, the Turks’ Fez and the
skullcaps of the Greeks.
In addition to
dyes for fabrics, cochineal is used as a food coloring to brighten
beverages, jam, sausages, dried fish, strawberry yogurt, maraschino
cherries, Campari and tomato products. It is the only natural red food
coloring approved by the FDA, under the official name “carmine”. You can
find it as well in medical tracers, artists’ paints and microscopy stains.
Not until the
late 1700s, when the insects were successfully introduced and grown outside
the Americas, was there wide acceptance that cochineal dye was produced from
the cochineal insect. Production peaked in the 1870s, reaching an annual
world output of 7 million pounds of dried insects. The introduction in the
1880s of much cheaper aniline synthetic dyes and subsequent red azo dyes
virtually eliminated cochineal production as well as cultivation of prickly
pear cacti for this purpose. Plantations still exist in the Canary Islands
(where I have relatives), Peru, Mexico and Algeria. With recent discoveries
that synthetic dyes in foods can cause cancer there has been some renewed
interest in cochineal production. One example is the government sponsored
Kuru Cochineal Project in Botswana, begun in 1998 to provide native peoples
with a new means of livelihood.
Recently, some
absolute vegetarians were shocked to learn that the fruit juice they had
been drinking contained a natural additive, which is OK, but unfortunately a
food dye of cochineal, made of insect parts. An outcry ensued. You may
have heard it. Their fruit juice contained, yes, animals! Please don’t
tell them that many plant-derived foods contain a few insect parts. Fruit
fly larvae here, some dried aphids there, some cochineal insect elsewhere.
It just can’t be avoided. Does it seem hypocritical for vegetarians to go
about eating animals?
Finally, a few
further bits of froth about the Bug That Changed History. It takes 70,000
cochineal insects to make one pound of dried cochineal. One pound sold for
$150 in 1995. Cochineal has been proposed to be the Arizona State Insect.
Pine Brookers who wish to bore more deeply into Cultural Entomology might
visit the website http://www.bugbios.com/ced1/cult_ent.html. The site cites
several sightings of insects in literature, such as The Gold Bug by
E. A. Poe, Metamorphosis by F. Kafka, and Autobiography of a Flea
by Anonymous.
We had better
stop here.
From
The Pine Brook Press, Autumn, 01
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