How to find giant insects:

Week-long time, not many posts.  We are still here!  It is just summertime with a lot going on, so here we go again...

So, here are some advice on how to find giant insects based on recent experiences in New Jersey.

Option 1. You paint a room and leave a window open without having a screen in it to keep the insects out.  A giant buzz follows and the largest blackest wasp you have ever seen will soon enter.


I ran out of the room (wasp allergy...), and PP came up to take a look at it, and we killed it with the hornet spray (sorry, but I just can't have wasps in the house). Looking closer, it turns out it was no wasp, it had only two wings.  It was a fly!  A fly that was nearly 7 cm between its wingtips and nearly 4 cm long from head to butt. Incredible.  That was pinned for the collection of course.

Option 2.  You take a walk on a road on a summer morning, early (say 7 AM), and keep looking down.  That is how I found these two insects, also giant and gorgeous.



This 'double-eyed click beetle' ('knäppare' in Swedish, Alaus oculatis) I found was about 4 cm long, and was laying dead on the road. First it just looked like a piece of asphalt with white eyes painted on it, but I doubt that was evolutionary mimicry...  I wonder how high this beetle can jump when it clicks on its back... 10 cm?  It must be more than the small click beetles at least.


And then this.  A fuzzy large yellow moth. It might have been killed by a car, or a bird.  The body was damaged, but all the parts where still there, except one missing antennae.  A quick google search for 'big yellow moth' made it clear that this is a male Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis), a species I have never seen before.


The moth got pinned and mounted in a Swedish 'spännbräda' with waxpaper over its wings to dry its forms and shapes in proper arrangement for an insect collection, of course.  Insects are really gorgeous and incredible.  I highly recommend the book Extreme Insects for more of the biggest and most amazing 6-legged creatures.