Comments | wtf_nature: Know Your Insects: The Giant Water Bug

juanoclock in wtf_nature

Know Your Insects: The Giant Water Bug

Mar 28, 2009 23:33

Have you ever read Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? Wonderful book. A bit long-winded, but the long-windedness is forgivable because the things she has to say are monumental ( Read more... )

invertebrate, predator, insect

Comments 12

chumas March 31 2009, 20:58:57 UTC

I used to have one of these as a pet in Korea when I was a kidlet.
The little shit would eat anything, and one day I threw it on this girl who was a twat and it bit her on the ear.

firebird_88 March 31 2009, 21:23:10 UTC

Liquified flesh. @_@; I seem to recall that would result in like... "scoops" in your muscles because everything's just gone. EWWWWWW.

And I pity the pretty shiny goldfish, thought that was pretty badass. xD;

spencer_mato March 31 2009, 23:06:58 UTC

Man, assassin bugs do the same shit and I've heard it hurts bad. The people I know who've been bitten cried and ended up having scars. And these are strong people who handle biting insects all the time. Horrific.

scythemantis March 31 2009, 23:25:49 UTC

I just recently moved to Florida, and I found literally over 200 of these in the course of just a couple days last year. It seems that every fall they start flying and mating en masse, and all I had to do was visit a nearby parking lot at night to find dozens of them scurrying and flopping at the base of streetlights.

Remarkably, I never got bit, which is good, because I'm a total pussy about the slightest pain (comes from having an ENTIRELY injury-free childhood, by sheer luck)

I was actually collecting them in buckets and sold them to fellow invertebrate hobbyists. I still have two of them!

But they're true bugs, not beetles :)

hollowman April 1 2009, 00:01:58 UTC

I had one of those buggers bite my toe when I was a kid. I blame them entirely for my continuing reluctance to go skinny dipping, or shorts dipping, or enter into a lake in anything less than chain mail.