Britain museum notes discovery of huge bug
It’s TGIF again!! How are you doing today..I just thought of sharing this good info especially for those who love to know about insects or Entomology..This is a cool news..I just got interest because last night I watched a movie about bees which is really very interesting. so now, I am also sharing what I read in the net news!! Enjoy your Friday guys and of course your coming weekend!! take care everyone!!
Britain museum notes discovery of huge bug
AP – In this undated picture made available Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 by Britain’s Natural History Museum, Orthoptera …
LONDON – A stick bug from the island of Borneo measuring well over a foot in length has been identified by researchers as the world’s longest insect, British scientists said Thursday.
The specimen was found by a local villager and handed to Malaysian amateur naturalist Datuk Chan Chew Lun in 1989, according to Philip Bragg, who formally identified the insect in this month’s issue of peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. The insect was named Phobaeticus chani, or “Chan’s megastick,” in Chan’s honor.
Paul Brock, a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum in London unconnected to the insect’s discovery said there was no doubt it was the longest still in existence. That assessment was also confirmed by Marco Gottardo, an entomologist at Italy’s Natural History Museum of Ferrara and Aaron T. Dossey, a researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville who studies the insects.
Looking like a pencil-thin shoot of bamboo, the dull-green insect measures about 22 inches, if its twig-like legs are counted. Its body length is 14 inches, beating the previous record held by Phobaeticus kirbyi, also from Borneo, by about an inch.
Stick bugs have some of the animal kingdom’s cleverest camouflage. Although some use noxious sprays or prickly spines to deter their predators, generally the bugs assume the shape of sticks and leaves to avoid drawing attention.
“Their main defense is basically hanging around, looking like a twig,” Brock said. “It will even sway in the wind.”
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source: http://news.yahoo.com
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Natural History Museum: http://www.nhm.ac.uk
