I always seem to get strange looks when I tell people that I love insects. I have a deep fascination with them and people always question ‘why?!’.
A friend recently asked me why I like them so much, and my immediate answer was that I find it so fascinating how they are so small and yet so clever and do so much for our planet. I am amazed when I think of how there is an entire insect world that the majority of people know nothing about, and yet we are all reaping the enormous rewards and benefits from their work.
And as well as this, I love seeing new discoveries of insects that we never knew existed. Ratio-wise, for every one million insects that we know about, there are another three million that still remain undiscovered.
Until recently, a new species of katydid was in the latter. This new species of katydid, which is a grasshopper-like insect, was discovered in Borneo, and has been named Eulophophyllum kirki.
The females of the new species are different shades of pink, whilst the males are a bright green. However, both species, as you can see, are expertly camouflaged in their native vegetation, strongly resembling leaves. It is hard to imagine that a whole network of internal insect-workings are inside that leaf-thin body.
It just absolutely amazes me that there are insects like these that are so intricately designed, that due to their perfect camouflage, we could have been walking straight past for hundreds of years.
According to Jess 