Adults are about 22–32 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Eupholus bennetti
A flightless rainforest weevil whose blue armour doubles as both camouflage-breaking spectacle and a warning label.
About this species
Eupholus bennettiGestro & D’Albertis, 1876
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Eupholus bennetti is a large New Guinean broad-nosed weevil marked with blue-green scales and black longitudinal bands. Adults browse foliage while root-feeding larvae remain underground.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Coleoptera · Curculionidae · Eupholus
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
New GuineaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
New Guinea
Lowland rainforest and forest edge on host foliage.
Diurnal and slow-moving on leaves and stems.
Leaves as adults; roots as larvae.
Solitary.
What makes this species remarkable?
The blue-green colour is produced by countless detachable scales rather than a continuous painted surface; abrasion can reveal the dark cuticle beneath like missing tiles in a mosaic.
Its fused wing cases make the adult flightless, an extraordinary trade-off in a rainforest insect where bright warning colour and chemical defence must compensate for the inability to escape by air.
The black bands disrupt the outline of the body while the blue scales remain conspicuous, combining two apparently opposite strategies: visual breakup at close range and warning advertisement at distance.