Unusual Creature Feature

Unusual Creature Feature

Being a naturalist, you never know when you will come upon a teachable moment.  A simple trip this morning to the Community Center to renew a license led to a very interesting discovery and yet another opportunity to research and learn.  I was in the office, and Beth (our bookkeeper) was outside.  She ran in and told me to come and check something out she found- sitting in the sand of the ashtray outside the community center door was a HUGE black beetle with beefy legs.  What in the world??  I thought right away of a predacious diving beetle, but they live in the water, right?  Not amongst cigarette butts in the sand…hmmmm.  Naturally I had to take it back to work with me to find out what we had.  I quickly threw some leaves into an ice cream bucket I had in the car (never leave home without all sizes and shapes of collection containers!) and carefully scooped it inside. 

Once we got back to the Center, it was investigation time.  I grabbed all our insect books and Katie (our Assistant Director) hopped online and we started our search.  It didn’t take long to find out what we had- a Giant Water Bug.  I didn’t know much about these critters, let alone what it was doing in the ashtray, so here are some interesting facts about the Giant Water Bug:

·       They are excellent flyers and are strongly attracted to bright lights in parking lots (which explains why it was there)

·       If handled they may squeak and give off an apple-like scent

·       They are aggressive predators who can attack and eat animals three times larger than itself; including tadpoles, fish, frogs, very young ducks and other insects. (YIKES!)

·       They hang head down on aquatic plants, close enough to the surface so that they can reach it with the short, retractable breathing tubes that protrude from the tip of their abdomen. (how cool is that?!)

·       they grab their prey, stab it with a short, sharp beak, and inject poisonous enzymes that immobilize it and then liquefy its innards so it can be slurped out (YUM!)

From the UW Milwaukee Field Station page, I found out these interesting stories about the GWB:

·       They have been known to bite and then “ride” larger prey until the prey succumbed to the effects of the poison

·       a captive GWB ate more than 2 dozen tadpoles in 24 hours

·       another captive GWB ate a 3 inch trout, several young frogs, tadpoles, snails and various fish fry in an unspecified period

·       a GWB was found struggling on the ground with a woodpecker, its legs wrapped around the bird’s bill and its beak sunk into the bird’s head (A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America by J. Reese Voshell, Jr.)

So interesting, what a crazy critter.  Well it’s off to release him into the lake, where he will be happy.

Anybody up for a swim?? J