snappy green

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Chrysochus auratus, or dogbane beetles

About 40 percent of all described insect species are beetles (about 400,000 species give or take a few thousand). If you want to become a beetle expert, you better get started. If you learn to identify one species a day, it'll take about 1096 years to master nature's oeuvre of Coleoptera.

Of these, roughly 10 percent are "leaf beetles" in the family Chrysomelidae. (Long word, you don't have to remember it.) Many of these are generally found on leaves munching away, like tour groups at a Shoney's salad bar. Other than the wanton destruction of plant cellulose, they are actually quite handsome.

These little guys look pretty snappy in their metallic green outfits like matching Colombian emeralds. Fond of milkweed, Indian hemp and dogbane, the dogbane leaf beetles give off a foul-smelling secretion when touched.

But go ahead and touch them, you know you can't help yourself.

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