These beetles with sparkling elytra and long, sprawling legs are not too uncommonly seen on the trunks of large trees by the trail. A stealthy approach is required to avoid spooking the insects into flight or a sudden drop into the leaf litter.
The beetles are probably Tenebrionids or darkling beetles: a specious family that includes oddities like armoured tanks, tap-tokking ground dwellers, dune-digging machines and mimics of leaf beetles and harvester ants. Less happy members of the family are the mealworms bred en masse to feed grub-loving pets. The adults are scavengers of dead and decaying plants and treehugging is probably just a distraction from their routine of condemning souls too fond of beetles to a life of too many numbers and too little knowledge.
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