Subject: Locust in Peru
Geographic location of the bug: Amazon jungle of Peru
Date: 11/14/2017
Time: 04:16 PM EDT
Beautiful bug, a kind of locust or similar, but I can’t identificate it.
The photo was on august 2009.
Thanks for helping.
How you want your letter signed: Ferran Lizana
Dear Ferran,
The blue and red legs on this Katydid are very distinctive. We found a very similar looking individual posted to Alamy that is identified as a Crayola Katydid, Vestria species, but the abdomen appears to be striped unlike your individual. Gil Wizen, entomologist and photographer has a similar image posted to his site and he writes: “As adults, the Vestria katydids take a different look completely. They are no longer flat and look like the huntsman spiders. In this stage they are known as rainbow katydids or crayola katydids because of their striking coloration, which is an advertisement of their chemical defense against predators. When provoked, Vestria katydids curl their body and hunker down, revealing a brightly colored abdomen. They also expose a scent gland from their last abdominal tergum and release a foul odor that is easily detectable from a close distance. Different species of Vestria have different odors, and from my personal experience I can attest that some species smell as bitter as bad almonds while others smell like a ripe peaches. The compounds released are pyrazines, and there is evidence that this chemical defense is effective against mammalian predators such as monkeys. While many katydids have bright aposematic coloration, Vestria species are one of the only examples of katydids successfully deploying chemical defense against predators, making them distasteful. But don’t listen to me, I actually like peaches.” Terry Wild Stock Photography has an image of an individual from the genus that most closely resembles your individual.
Oooh!! You are great!!
What a strange species, I’m very happy to had been taken this picture!!
X)))