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Sticker of Japanese jewel beetle
Bug card No. 0789 of 1,500

Japanese jewel beetle

Chrysochroa fulgidissima
Eats: WoodBeetlesForests and woods6 legs

The Japanese jewel beetle shines like a real jewel. Its long wing cases glow green and red, and the colours change when you look from a different side. It likes to fly in the hot summer sun in the woods.

Lives in
Japan and Korea, in woods and forests
Length
3 to 4.1 cm (1.2 to 1.6 in)
Top speed
about 0.83 km/h (0.52 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. It does not sting and is just lovely to look at.
What does it eat?
Its young grow up inside trees and eat the wood. That is why it is called a woodboring beetle.
For real!Photo of Japanese jewel beetle
Picture by β€˜Uncle Carl’ (γ‚«γƒΌγƒ«γŠγ˜γ•γ‚“).. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Japanese jewel beetle about 4.1 cm long (1.6 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 7 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 4.3 seconds

How big is Japanese jewel beetle compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Long ago in Japan, people decorated a tiny temple shrine with thousands of its shiny wings. You can still see it today.

2

Because its colour keeps changing, nobody can say for sure what colour it is.

3

In Japanese, saying something is beetle coloured means it can be understood in more than one way.

4

It is one of the bigger beetles, about as long as your thumb.

you asked

Most asked questions about Japanese jewel beetle

?Why does the jewel beetle shine?

Its wing cases are iridescent, so they glow with different colours depending on how the light hits them.

?Where does the Japanese jewel beetle live?

In Japan and Korea, in sunny woods and forests in summer.

?How big is a Japanese jewel beetle?

It grows about 30 to 41 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Chrysochroa fulgidissima
Group
Beetles
Family
Buprestidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Buprestidae
Lives on
Asia
Also known as
Yamato tamamushi, Jewel beetle

Where the facts come from

  1. Chrysochroa fulgidissima (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by β€˜Uncle Carl’ (γ‚«γƒΌγƒ«γŠγ˜γ•γ‚“).. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

More from the same group: Beetles

Also at home here: Forests and woods