Giant Water Insect
The giant water bug has a creepy way of eating its prey. Hiding among the aquatic plants, he will ambush anything that passes in front of him with his strong front legs.
This giant water insect, which can reach 12 cm in length , often preys on animals that are larger than it. Starting from fish, snakes, turtles, even ducks.
Although scary when it comes to eating, this giant aquatic insect has a unique parenting style, especially in caring for its eggs. Most of the males of this type provide themselves carrying the eggs from the female on their backs .
The male will guard it from other animals, including from the female until it hatches. Uniquely, the eggs carried on its back can come from more than one female.
Giant water bugs or giant water bugs have a scary way of eating their prey. Hiding among the aquatic plants, he will ambush anything that passes in front of him with his strong front legs.
This giant water insect, which can reach 12 cm in length, often preys on animals that are larger than it. Starting from fish, snakes, turtles, even ducks.
Once caught, these insects will eat their prey in a brutal way. Using a body part called the proboscis or trunk, he will inject enzymes and other chemical fluids into the victim's body. Like a vampire, this giant aquatic insect slowly sucks the contents of the victim's body alive.
In animal classification, giant water insects are in the Family Belostomatidae , Order Hemiptera , Class Insecta , Division Artrhopoda , and Kingdom Animalia .
In general , the difference between bugs and insects is that bugs use their proboscis to eat and have no other parts in their mouths.
Another difference, insects undergo four stages of metamorphosis namely egg, larva, pupa, and adult insects. While bugs have only three stages, namely eggs, nymphs, and adult insects. Thus, all bugs are insects but not all insects are bugs .
The job of the male
Although scary when it comes to eating, this giant aquatic insect has a unique parenting style, especially in caring for its eggs. Most of the males of this type provide themselves carrying the eggs from the female on their backs. The male will guard it from other animals, including from the female until it hatches. Uniquely, the eggs carried on its back can come from more than one female.
Shin-ya Ohba , a researcher from the Biological Laboratory, Faculty of Education, Nagasaki University, Japan, and his colleagues observed the behavior of a giant water insect of the type Kirkaldyia deyrollei . In research published in the Journal of Insect Behavior , 2023, it was revealed that male water bugs will rise above the water when another female is present. This is considered a strategy to protect the eggs from the female.
As is known, female giant water insects have a habit of infanticide or killing their own offspring. The giant male aquatic insects do not lay eggs on their backs, but lay them on plants on the surface of the water. The male will wet the eggs by dripping water from his body to keep the eggs moist.
In Shin-ya Ohba's previous research, it was observed that male water insects that carried eggs on their backs were more attractive to females than those that did not carry eggs at all. In a research report published in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science , 2016, together with his colleague Shin-ya Ohba observed the behavior of water insects of the type Appasus major and Appasus japonicus .
“In the first test, one male carried eggs on his back and the other did not. The presence of eggs was transferred in the second test. Experiments revealed that females of both species preferred males who cared [about the eggs] over those who did not," the report states.
Appasus water insect , the female will lay her eggs on the male's back, who will guard them until they hatch. It takes about a month for the eggs to hatch in spring and only a week in midsummer. After the eggs hatch, the male can mate with several females again.
The study also observed that a male can carry more eggs than a female can produce. In A. major the maximum number of eggs that can be transported is around 117 eggs. While the number of eggs a female can produce is 46 points.
In the type of A. j aponicus , the number of eggs carried can reach 155 eggs, while the female never lays more than 50 eggs. Interestingly, the eggs carried by a male are not necessarily fertilized by him. In the A. major species, 28.4 percent of the eggs on one male's back were fertilized by other males.
The giant water insects in the Belostomatidae family have about 160 species. The largest type is Lethocerus maximus . In Southeast Asia, this giant water insect is used as a source of protein. Street vendors in Thailand usually sell this giant water bug that looks like a cockroach but is bigger as a snack.
One of these insect species, can reduce the spread of dengue fever. In a study in the Philippines , nymphs of the species Diplonychus rusticus were found to prey on the larvae of the Aedes aegypti mosquito .