Man Finds An Incredible Beetle Who's Almost Too Stunning To Be Real (Pics & Video)

Michael Farmer spotted something he couldn’t quite believe whether it's real, while strolling the grounds of his property in Costa Rica. There, on the leaves of a guava tree, was what looked to be a small metal object — glinting in the sun like a piece of polished chrome. But then it began crawling. It was, in fact, a living thing.

C. limbata measures between 25 and 35 mm in length. They have a reflective silver metallic appearance which is achieved through thin film interference within layers of chitin. These layers of the chitin coating are chirped (in layers of differing thicknesses), forming a complex multilayer as each layer decreases in depth; as the thickness changes, so too does the optical path-length. Each chirped layer is tuned to a different wavelength of light. The multilayer found on C. limbata reflects close to 97% of light across the visible wavelength range.