Graciela: This bug caught my eye while outside the house. It looks like someone painted it.
Michael: Neither my wife nor I knew what kind it is. I put a photo on Facebook asking for help in identification. A relative sent me an Email with a link. It is called a Chinche del Colores. They are from the order of Hemiptera. According to Wikipedia it includes somewhere between 50,000 to 80,000 species. So it is related to the cicada and bedbug.
A friend of ours in Colombia wrote that the more colors a chinche has the more apt it is to use bad smell as a defense weapon. Gee, and I kept poking the camera in its face.
My high school friend, Gary, wrote that the creature is possibly a Thasus Acutangulus. According to the Wikipedia the genus Thasus are leaf-footed bugs. And they are also of the order Hemiptera.
Graciela: This specie is only about a centimeter in length and native to South American.
Looks like a piece of jewelry! One of the things I love about travel is that you never know what you might see in terms of animal/bug life. We saw some of the most amazing things when we spent our 3 months in South Africa and I’m sure you have the same variety in Colombia.
Frank (bbqboy)
Thank you Frank for stopping by our site and taking time to leave a comment. You are so right about discovering even the little things when one travels. And you have shown many on your blog site of http://www.BBQboy.net