Beautiful colored kaytdids

Asahi Shimbun reports that a woman in Osaka discovered these pretty katydids in a field.

Osaka Museum of Natural History entomologist Itaru Kanazawa identifies them as the larvae of Euconocephalus thunbergi (”kubikirigisu” in Japanese), a close relative of the katydid. While he says it is normal for these insects to change between green and brown to match their surroundings, pink and white are considered abnormal.

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Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Ryan

http://flickr.com/search/?q=pink%20katydid&w=all

It looks like Pink Katydids also exist in adult form, and some of them can be quite vividly pink.
Beastmouth

Actually, those are mostly immature katydids. You can tell by the length of their wings. The one that is an adult is very lucky; bright pink is much worse camouflage than grass green!
Stacyj

Man, I love those. What a -delicious- universe we live in, when even our insects can be so bizarrely lovely …
Anonymous

it was found at a man’s yard, not a woman’s.
SheMuses

In a Butterfly Gardener’s backyard I once observed the most amazing dragonflies, one blue velvet, one red velvet, even one in an electric violet bodysuit! How do you encourage these eyezapping decor?
JPW

If misspellings bug you, check the article’s title. . . .