#giant katydids

[goatguyeddy]

Never saying yes to a marriage proposal, unless it’s like this

[professionalunprofessional]

The Giant Katydid… what a chonker!

[onenicebugperday]

Giant Malaysian katydids, Arachnacris sp., Tettigoniidae

Photos 1-2 by squiresk, 3 by lkuijvenhoven, 4-6 by yah_japan, 7 by jiroiguchi, and 8-10 by gancw1

[heartnosekid]

slow-mo of a giant katydid absolutely ending you | source

[drinksss]

donuts

[daftpatience]

can you tell us about the biggest bug or insect that you have seen & remembered

ooh ok! at the victoria bug zoo i got to hold some elderly giant katydids and they made cute creaking noises and had funny crinkly rear ends cus sometimes leaf mimic bugs will nibble on eachother.

we were there near the end of the day so the tour guide person (who was super hot) and us were sort of just hanging out and chatting and holding cool bugs. it was so great

[quinnfrankephotography]

Nice walk this morning. Very dark and grey but cool and nice and the park was relatively empty.

It's only been a few days, but I want my old camera back do much.

[ratcandy]

i love the bug collection

whats ur favorite bug in the collection

There’s many in there I like but I’m gonna go with the one I named . This is Dave .my Mantis (at least how I found him):

stared really hard at a tree until a twig moved slightly and behold. A man

[herpwrangler]

giant katydid spotted

[wildegeist-old]

The look this katydid is giving me feels scornful somehow

[leviathiane]

waugh i get a lot of photos from friends asking me to identify a bug and they all just gave me the OK to post them on my entomo/arachnology instagram but now i have to actually go ID them down to the latin names fuck

[tiktaaliker]

just picturing lucky shot's reptid parent pointing at the irregular parent like "you're a freak. i like that." and that's how they get together

once again this is one of the types of asks i get thats like. you joke but that is almost literally what happens for real. its like how sometimes when birds get banded they will attract more mates because its a cool color or its shiny. like yeah theyre all freaks of nature who shouldnt reasonably exist but also. they do be kinda fly tho 👀

[bogleech]

Top ten imaginary bugs?

A tree dwelling cockroach that lights up like a firefly

A big spiny predatory katydid that lights up to lure the cockroaches

A freshwater mantis shrimp I could just find at the average creek like I can crawfish.

A "giant" (like 2 inches) flightless lousefly that can thrive on any vertebrate blood and bites things at night like a vampire bat, wouldn't spread disease or infest homes or even be any more painful than a mosquito but you know it'd freak people out real bad anyways. Just something extra to keep humans on their toes.

A giant (like 1 inch) snout mite because they're really fun carnivorous mites with pointy noses, I wanna be able to keep them as pets too, or an even more giant tick but it's a non-biting scavenger. I want a big friendly tick.

A freshwater goose barnacle that can grow on land and catch insects like a venus flytrap.

A fully terrestrial crab that lives positively everywhere just so we'd have a culture in which crabs have to be recognized as common woodland creatures instead of mainly sea or beach creatures. I just think that would be fun. Might be neat if it's also super spiny all over.

A positively colossal (half an inch) tardigrade. Some tardigrades are predators, it could be one of those. A ferocious mega tardigrade that eats worms and termites and things.

One single small, plain species of trilobite that survived extinction by coming onto land but it's a petty nuisance to us, like it loves to eat stucco or something.

A biting vampire butterfly. Vampire moths exist, but they're rare and nocturnal. The vampire butterfly should be common and act like any other butterfly except that it will bite you if it gets the chance. As with the woodland crab I just wanna see what cultural impact there'd be if one butterfly was scary. It should look really distinct among all butterflies for ease of artistic use. So nobody has to explain what kind of butterfly it is if they got it for a tattoo or put it on an album cover.

[onenicebugperday]

Do you have a favorite threat display pose from a bug? I know its bad if the animal is stressed but also so many mantis ones are just so pretty and silly (up go the arms!), it makes me wonder what other bugs have got goin on

I do love mantid threat displays! My favorite species (Idolomantis diabolica) has a beautiful threat display:

Ahhh I’m scared! Photo by also_sprach_susscrofa

But there are a lot that are super fun, especially the ones with false eyes on the wings. The katydid Pterochroza ocellata comes to mind:

Neat :) Photo by paulcools

Honorable mention to the ilia underwing moth caterpillar who, when threatened, flips onto its back to reveal a startlingly purple/pink belly!

Very “don’t eat me.” Photo by hannahwojo

[bugkeeping]

giant leaf katydid (Steirodon sp.) cleaning her antenna :)

[drinksss]