Big bugs

And you thought your dock spider was big!

We were just sent a book called Biggest Bugs Life-size. It shows, as you would expect, the biggest bugs from around the world—and it shows them life-size. It includes:

• the Titan Longhorn Beetle which has jaws powerful enough to snap pencils in half.

• the Dragon Hawker Dragonfly nymph has the largest wingspan of any dragonfly and is thought to eat not only invertebrates but tadpoles and fish. (Yikes!) The largest known specimen is a female from Borneo, with a wingspan of 172 mm.

• and my favourite: the Chan’s Megastick, which looks (only to the untrained eye, I’m sure) like the Northern walking stick we find in Ontario. But while ours is found up to 100 mm in length this lady (yes, the record-breaking one is a female) is 357 mm or 14 inches long. That’s about the same size as two Cottage Life magazines, one standing on top of the other.

I was pleased to find that none of this book’s insects are found in Canada. Phew!