A photorealistic bioluminescent blue-green beetle with glowing eyes and tail on a dark, misty forest floor.

There are many hexapods (six legged creatures) on Pandora including a great number of insects. One such insect is the lumipod beetle. This beetle has six, jointed legs, which carry it across the ground at an impressive pace. It has a thick exoskeleton covering its broad abdomen and thorax, and protecting its retractable bioluminescent tail. The sizeable tail is almost double the length of the beetle and mimics an electric ground viper when seen at night. This ingenious adaptation ensures that larger predators are less likely to pursue the creature in the dark, due to the snake-like appearance of the tail. Lumipods have two compound eyes at the front of their head, which also glow with a bioluminescent light. Their eyes are made up of several thousand individual unit lenses, consequently enabling the creature to see a much wider area than the human eye, despite not being particularly large. Sharp, forked mandibles above the mouth allow the beetle to crush its food, though it also has a second set which are jagged and used when fighting. The banded lumipod gets its peculiar name from the black and grey bands around the abdomen, which are dual function: they help with camouflage but also secrete a toxic venom if ingested. There are around 20 species of lumipod on Pandora, including banded, flying and spotted. Mehr sehen