World’s Largest Insect – Eats Carrots
The giant weta can weigh nearly three ounces … more than a sparrow … more than three mice. This one is the largest ever recorded.
She was pregnant (which explains the extra size), and was found on New Zealand’s Little Barrier Island – the only place that’s home to giant wetas – by scientist Mark Moffett.
We spent many hours with no luck finding any at all, before we saw her up in a tree.
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.
So, after she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her.
Might she have eaten his finger? Unlikely. Wetas prefer fruit and the occasional small insect.
Wetas used to be on the mainland, too, but were wiped out there by rats who arrived on the ships of wih Europeans who came ashore in the 18th Century.
The reason they’re so big is that animals on islands tend to get bigger than their mainland relatives because of their isolation and lack of predators.