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September 22, 2009
September 22, 2009
Green Leaf Insect
Photograph by Christian Ziegler
This Month in Photo of the Day: National Geographic Magazine
Eyes and antennae barely reveal the head of the leaf insect Phyllium giganteum. Early botanists believed that leaf insects actually incorporated the foliage they mimicked. As Royal Society Fellow Richard Bradley wrote in 1759, "The insect is nourished by the juices of the tree … and at the fall of the leaf, drops from the tree with the leaves growing to its body like wings, then walks about."
See more photographs from the August 2009 feature story "The Art of Deception."
