Giant Weta Insect Pictures

The Giant Weta – Heaviest Insect on the Planet

I apologize ahead of time for freaking you out. This insanely giant insect called a “Giant Weta“, is the worlds heaviest bug. The Giant Weta is 71 grams and has a windspan of around 7 inches! What’s even more horrifying is the fact that it’s so large that it eats carrots! This Giant Weta was found by Mark Moffett, a 53-year-old former park ranger, on a remote New Zealand Island. There are actually over 70 different types of Weta insects, however this one trumps them all.

Moffett had some comments while feeding the Giant insect:

“She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away,” (said Mark Moffet, the former park ranger who found it in a tree.)

“She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn’t want to risk indigestion.

“After she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her.”

I wouldn’t want one of these things crawling into my house, that’s for sure! Anyway, here are some pictures of Giant Weta insects…

Giant Weta facts:

The Little Barrier Island Weta, or ‘Wetapunga’ as it was known to the Maori, is one of the largest and heaviest insects in the world,The largest weta recorded was a female and it weighed around THREE TIMES heavier than a mouse! (71 grams),

The Maori named the Little Barrier Island Giant Weta, ‘Wetapunga’, which means ‘god of ugly things’,

The gentle giant of the insect world, the Giant weta prefers a vegetarian diet,

The Giant weta often lives under rocks and bush floor debris,

The Giant weta is so heavy that it cannot jump,

The weta is sometimes known as the dinosaur of the insect world,

The weta has changed very little in the past 100 MILLION YEARS!,

At around two years old the female will lay 100-300 eggs. The parents will die before the weta eggs hatch 3-5 months later.

4 replies on “Giant Weta Insect Pictures – The World’s Biggest Insect, Eats Carrots”

This is amazing. Just can’t imagine but there are giant cockroaches and then there is the Komno dragon these kind of insects and animals just amaze me!