Largest Insect on Planet Discovered

HOLY HELL GET IT AWAY FROM US.

What has a seven-inch legspan, can chow down on full size carrots, and has six legs? A giant weta, that's what, and one of them found recently could quite possibly be the world's largest insect. Mark Moffet, a retired American park ranger, found a female of the abomination species on New Zealand's Little Barrier Island, where it once lived in greater numbers before European settlers flooded the island with rats. (Crazy Europeans, always with their rats...) The female weta weighed 71 grams – as much as three mice – and munched on a carrot offered by Moffet before he released the giant cricket-type thing back into the wild. Even if it is supposedly a gentle giant that only eats plants, we're going to go erase any memory we had of this thing existing with our good friend Johnny Walker.

More from The Mark:

Hidden Animals in Mona Lisa?