Damn, Nature, you scary.
Another insect has crawled its way under our doors and silently, menacingly requested entry into our “Kill It With Fire” scary insects club. It’ll join fellow scary insects the Brahmin Moth Caterpillar, the Giant Weta, and the Australian Pink Underwing Moth Caterpillar as one of many reasons we never, ever leave the house. Meet the Bocydium globulare, also known as the Brazilian Treehopper. Oh dear God, it can hop? Dead. I am now dead.
The Brazilian Treehopper hangs out on glory bushes, probably making eye contact with you for an uncomfortable amount of time. The junk on its head may serve the function of making it more difficult to eat (because we were totally going to try to) or it may serve a tactile function. Or it may just be there to totally skeeve us out because scary insects are jerks.
See more photos of living treehoppers like the one pictured above — along with several other photos of membracids, the headgeared group of insects to which Bocydium globulare belongs — over on Why Evolution Is True. See also: this gallery of weird treehopper insects, courtesy of New Scientist, and this series of amazing membracid photographs by photographer Patrick Landmann. [via io9, sculpture at right by Alfred Keller]
Yeah, we could look at all those other pictures, io9, or we could just run screaming out of the room, leaving a smattering of GIFs in our wake….