These truly amazing looking insects are known commonly as FROG BEETLES and they originate in south-east Asian countries including Thailand.  They are known as frog beetles due to the huge size of their back legs!

Frog beetles are naturally found in an amazing mixture of colours as you can see below.  These beetles are hugely popular as art exhibits which is a great shame as many thousands are killed every year before being dried, framed and sold.   In fact the individuals I now have here would have been intended to be sold into the art market, but I am going to use them to educate people about why their beauty should be appreciated LIVE not dead!!

As you can clearly see from these pictures, frog beetles are exceptionally beautiful animals and their metallic appearance and colouration is amazing.

Like many species of beetle, frog beetles have exceptionally sticky foot pads and can cling to any surface including glass, as shown here by two of them!  The 'stickiness' is actually the result of there being thousands of tiny hairs on their feet which allow them to grip to even the tiniest imperfections in the smoothest materials!

Like all beetles, frog beetles start their lives as larvae or grubs.  When the grubs have become large enough they create a cocoon or pupal cell within which the body completely changes from grub to beetle.  In the case of frog beetles these pupal cells look like the ones below, with the broken one at the front having already had a beetle emerge out of it!