drawing of green beetle with rainbow colors in the legs.

Chafer beetles are one of the many insects that display iridescent colors. The super cool thing about chafer beetle iridescence is from circularly polarized light reflecting off it… and circularly polarized light is what makes modern 3-D movies work.

If you have a pair of modern 3-D glasses, and have the right type of chafer beetle, one of the 3-D lenses should cancel out the polarized light reflected off the beetle. The iridescence will disappear.

What color will the beetle be, without its iridescence?

Black!

Colored pencil and Micron pen on Duralar film.

Unicorn Chafer Beetle: Trigonophorus rothschildi (maybe… there are a lot of chafer beetles out there)