Description
Frog-legged beetles can be found in the jungles of Southeast Asia, this brightly colored, 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 behavior has been observed in several beetles belonging to a different family – Coreidae – which features similarly oversized hind legs.
