World's biggest insect that can eat carrots found - Times of India

LONDON: A giant cricket-like creature that can eat a whole carrot has been declared the world's the largest ever insect to be found.

The creepy crawly, which weighs a staggering 71 grams and has a wing span of seven inches, has been discovered on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand.

Adventurer Mark Moffett, who found the female weta up a tree after two day's searching on the island, said the species were wiped off the mainland by rats accidentally introduced by Europeans.

"The giant weta is the largest insect in the world, and this is the biggest one ever found, she weighs the equivalent to three mice," Moffett, an entomologist and explorer at the Smithsonian Institution in the US, was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.

According to him, the search team fed the insect a carrot before putting it where it was found.

"She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away," Moffett said.

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

He added, "we bug lovers hear a lot of people who think insects are inferior in some way because of their size, so it was great to see such a big insect.

"This became all the more amazing when we realised that this was the largest insect recorded."