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A Color-Changing Hot-Pink Katydid in the Rainforests of Panama

Some animals are masters of camouflage not because they vanish, but because they stand in plain sight and persuade you not to see them. Leaves, twigs, stones, patches of necrosis—by resembling such ordinary features of their surroundings, many insects turn the environment itself into a protective disguise. One such leaf-masquerading insect is Arota festae, a katydid native to Panama, Colombia, and Suriname. It is about 2.7 centimeters long and weighs roughly 1 gram. With broad, rounded, pale-green forewings, it usually looks much like a tender young leaf. Yet one night on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, a research team encountered a strikingly different adult female: her entire body was an intense hot pink.


Typical green morph of Arota festae（Image source：Orthoptera Species File， CC BY 4.0 ）
Typical green morph of Arota festae（Image source：Orthoptera Species File， CC BY 4.0 ）

Hot-pink morph of Arota festae（Image source：Wainwright JB et al. (2026)， CC BY 4.0 ）
Hot-pink morph of Arota festae（Image source：Wainwright JB et al. (2026)， CC BY 4.0 ）

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