#frog beetle

[onenicebugperday]

@quiksilvear​ submitted: I keep forgetting to take a picture of the huntsman for you but I did get some pics of a lovely frog beetle, who I think is a she!

She got stuck in a feather leg web I think, used feather touch tweezers and got it off her, it was all over her face, there’s also a bit left on her legs. She was very sweet about it, and just let me take it off, and walked on me afterwards. I love her.

Bonus tarantula!

She’s pointing at you!

Ohohoho get a load of these friends. These for sure make up for the lack of huntsman photos. Please, next time you see them...tell them both I love them deeply and think they are very beautiful.

[hallucinogeniusvmjp]

Real Frog Beetle art framed insect curio display handmade collage

Featuring a real insect species known as the Frog Beetle (sagra buqueti) native to Thailand and Malaysia. These iridescent, colorful beetles

[dailyinsectart]

Day 41 - Sagra Buqueti / Frog Beetle / Scarabée Grenouille

This is a male, the female is much smaller without the thick hind legs.

[wormlizard]

[wormlizard]

[typhlonectes]

Beetle Battles:  The Secret World of Leg Wrestling and Abdomen Squeezing

by Bec Crew

This is the frog-legged leaf beetle (Sagra buqueti), and there’s a good chance those gigantic gams are his weapons.

Found in the jungles of Southeast Asia, this brightly coloured, iridescent species can grow up to 5 cm long. Unlike its namesake, it doesn’t use its hind legs for jumping, instead they’re used to cling onto stems and foliage while it eats, its grip aided by scores of tiny hair follicles that cover the surface of the leg.

But there could be more to those legs than just grip, because look at the difference between the males and females.

If both the males and females move around the trees in much the same way to search for food, there must be a reason why the males ended up with such monstrous hind legs, which has led researchers to suspect that they could be a sexually selected trait that evolved as the result of male-on-male contests over females.

We’re yet to see a leg battle between two frog-legged leaf beetles, but this behaviour has been observed in several beetles belonging to a different family – Coreidae – which features similarly oversized hind legs...

(read more: Scientific American)

photograph by © Smithsonian Institution-NMNH-Insect Zoo

[typhlonectes]

Butterfly Pavilion + Insect Zoo, Smithsonian Institution

Check out those gams! Little is known about what Frog Beetles (Sagra buqueti), from SE Asia, do with their enlarged hind legs, but they certainly are beautiful to look at. Smithsonian researchers think they may be used for wrestling other males.

[heatherheitzenraterart]

Frog beetle-ink on clay board 

Heather Heitzenrater