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Biggest Bug

December 3, 2011 by · Comments Off on Biggest Bug 

Biggest Bug, The New Zealand giant weta, touted as the biggest insect in the world, was recently found in New Zealand’s Little Barrier Island. The Smithsonian Institution’s resident entomologist and explorer Mark Moffett found the creature, who apparently enjoys chomping on carrots, after two nights of searching the protected island, according to MSNBC.

“The giant weta is the largest insect in the world, and this is the biggest one ever found,” Moffet said, according to Britain’s Daily Mail. “She weighs the equivalent to three mice. … She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away. She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species, and we didn’t want to risk indigestion.”

The cricket-like insect insect weighs 2.5 ounces and its length is 7 inches, according to MSNBC.

“I did not measure anything but the weight (one should correctly call it the ‘world’s heaviest adult insect’), but a rough estimate from the picture suggests an outstretched leg might be 7 inches,” Mofffet says in an e-mail to MSNBC. “The weta is essentially wingless: no wings to see at all, let alone a seven-inch wing. [As to size:] I’ve seen a walking stick nearly 19 inches long in Sarawak, Malaysia, but it weighs next to nothing!”

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