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Giant Wetas are a group of twelve large, flightless insects endemic to New Zealand. They belong to the genus Deinacrida, with individual species displaying varying sizes and appearances.
The Giant Wetas are among the heaviest insects in the world. The heaviest-known individual weighed around 70 grams (2.47 oz).
Wetas are primarily nocturnal and herbivorous, feeding on leaves, fruit, and other plant material, although they may occasionally consume other invertebrates.
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Everyone loves the mantis shrimp, so here you go.
Mantis shrimp are either "spearers" or "smashers" depending on their claws and prey-killing tactics. Spearers have spiny appendages with barbed tips, that are used to stab soft-bodied prey, such as different types of worms and fish. Smashers have more developed club-like appendages that are used to bludgeon and smash their prey to pieces.
Smashers can punch at same velocity as a gunshot from a .22 caliber rifle. Smasher mantis shrimp have two raptorial appendages (called ‘dactyl clubs’) on the front of its body that it uses to punch its prey. These fists are spring loaded, able to accelerate from their body at over 50 mph, delivering a force of over 1,500 newtons, enough to smash through crabs and clam shells.
They can crack and punch holes in aquarium glass. While they are highly desired, they require special stronger aquariums. When they encounter an obstacle they wish to move, they often try and punch their way out. They have also been known to attack their own reflection through the glass.
Eyes of mantis shrimp are located on the long stalks that can move independently. Each eye has ‘trinocular vision’, which means it can gauge depth and distance on its own by focusing on objects with three separate regions. They are thought to have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom and have the most complex visual system ever discovered They can see a special spiraling type of light called circularly polarized light that’s not been documented in any other animal. They also have a structure in their eyes that’s similar to technology found in DVD players, only much more advanced.
While they have significantly more color photo-receptors, research suggests they are actually worse at differentiating color than humans. However, scientists believe this is because their eyes are operating at a different level, functioning more like a satellite. It’s believed Mantis shrimp can take all visual information into their brains immediately without having to process it, allowing them to react instantly to the environment.
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Jumping spider eyes are, in a word, incredible. The spiders, despite their tiny size, are better at seeing patterns than elephants are. Their pair of central eyes, known as the principle eyes, are almost like a pair of tiny binoculars: They have a large outer lens, then a smaller inner lens that magnifies the image from the outer lens and projects it onto the retina. The spiders are also unusual in that they have muscles attached directly to their retinas. That means they can move retinas up and down, side to side, focusing on different segments of the world without a hint of movement on the outside — a handy ability for a hunter. Meanwhile, the spiders' secondary pairs of eyes are less acute, but they provide crucial peripheral vision, Live Science previously reported.
Most species of jumping spider can see ultraviolet light and blues and greens. Some species, though, have evolved special tricks to expand their color vision. These tend to be the flashier species, such as the paradise jumping spiders (genus Habbernatus), which are often decorated in shades of red and orange. In some species, a random genetic mutation has introduced an extra copy of the gene that makes the proteins that allow for blue/green vision. This extra copy has then acquired mutations capable of detecting red and orange. Similar mutations allowed primates to develop color vision.
Jumping spiders can live up to their name. These spiders don't hunt by snaring prey in a web, but rather they stalk their quarry and then leap. Despite their tiny body size, jumping spiders can leap up to 6.3 inches (160 mm), according to a 2018 paper in the journal Scientific Reports. The spiders often spin a little silk and set a thread-like "anchor" before they leap, which may help stabilize their flight and protect them in case their landing is off. Jumping spiders most often jump to catch their prey, but sometimes leap to flee danger. They can also be quite clever: Researchers in the 2018 study actually trained a jumping spider (Phidippus regius) to leap from platform to platform.
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I've had requests to include the adult moth stage so here it is, plus bonus cocoon.
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The traditional appearance of the sea spider is that of long legs and a small body. Across the many species of sea spider, the leg count varies from 4 – 6 pairs. Sea spiders operate without the respiratory system that we are used to. Instead, they use their legs to take in vital gasses, such as oxygen. They also utilize a proboscis, which enables them to digest soft-bodied invertebrates via a sucking mechanism. Some species of sea spiders are so tiny that the muscles on their exoskeleton are made of just a single cell. The legs of sea spiders also contain their guts and genitals, which makes them very unique.
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Relative to other insects, dragonflies have extraordinarily keen vision that helps them detect the movement of other flying critters and avoid in-flight collisions. Thanks to two huge compound eyes, the dragonfly has nearly 360° vision and can see a wider spectrum of colors than humans. Each compound eye contains 28,000 lenses or ommatidia and a dragonfly uses about 80% of its brain to process all of the visual information it receives.
Dragonflies are able to move each of their four wings independently. They can flap each wing up and down, and rotate their wings forward and back on an axis. Dragonflies can move straight up or down, fly backward, stop and hover, and make hairpin turns—at full speed or in slow motion. A dragonfly can fly forward at a speed of 100 body lengths per second (up to 30 miles per hour).
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A species endemic to North America, the asp caterpillar—Megalopyge opercularis—looks quite harmless. However, it should be treated with extreme caution as it has very powerful venom and is one of the most toxic caterpillars in North America. At the end of the fluffy hairs lie sharp, poisonous spines which pierce the skin and can cause extreme allergic reactions such as inflammation, blisters, headaches, nausea and breathing difficulties. These symptoms can last for days.
Many cases of injury have been reported in the United States over the years—the injuries occur mainly in children as they try to pick up these creatures. The asp caterpillar grows to two centimeters in length an the adult is the crinkled flannel moth, which also has a bizarre, yeti-like appearance.
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Kiwa are a genus of marine decapods that inhabit hydrothermal vents and cold seeps at deep-sea levels. They have three nicknames that are often used instead of their actual name – yeti crab, yeti lobster, or furry lobster.
The yeti crab farms its own food – on its arms
The hairy ‘arms’ of this tiny crab capture all kinds of bacteria that live and grow on the crab. To encourage growth, yeti crabs have been seen waving it’s arms back and forth in seeping vents.
As a result, the bacteria are the primary source of food for the yeti crab.
The yeti crab official name comes from mythology. The Polynesian goddess of shellfish was named Kiwa.
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The giraffe necked weevil is named for the long neck which is colored black. At the top of the neck is the head which features two eyes and a pair of antennae which project out from it. Males have a much longer neck than females sometimes by three times as much.
Males have this longer neck for use in combat across other males.
A pair of males will fight for mating rights with a female. She may wait close by while they duel using their long necks and then mates with the winner. On a rare occasion these fights may end in death for one of the parties.
The female deposits a single egg on a leaf and then rolls this up to provide protection to the egg and gives it its first meal upon hatching. Once this role is completed they will cut the tube so it falls to the forest floor.
After hatching the giraffe necked weevil is a yellowish larva which feeds on the leaf it was wrapped in. It will then undertake a pupation to become an adult weevil.
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Remipede venom is odd compared to that of other arthropods. While some spiders, for example, use venom consisting of tiny neurotoxic proteins, the remipede’s toxic cocktail is dominated by larger enzymes that break down the exoskeletons of their prey and destroy proteins in their bodies, softening their defenses and making their insides more easily digestible. In its makeup, the researchers say, remipede’s venom is more like that of vipers than any of its arthropod cousins. There is one familial similarity, though: a neurotoxin that paralyzes the remipede’s victims and is nearly identical to one found in spiders.
With so many crustaceans out there, why is the remipede the only one to become venomous? The researchers think that because the group has such varied diets—some are filter feeders, some are scavengers—none of them really needed a potent weapon for taking down large prey. While remipedes have also been seen filtering small bits of food from the water, their environment and lifestyle pressured them into going toxic.
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Giant Shield Bug -Tessaratomids resemble large stink bugs (family Pentatomidae) and are sometimes quite colorful. Most tessaratomids are Old World, with only three species known from the Neotropics. Some members of Tessaratomidae exhibit maternal care of eggs and offspring. The defensive chemicals of certain species can cause significant damage if they come into contact with human skin; they may also cause temporary blindness. All species are exclusively plant-eaters, some of major economic importance as agricultural pests. A few species are also consumed as human food in some countries.
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The smallest arthropod of any kind (and also the smallest species of crustacean) is Stygotantulus stocki, a tantulocarid. This tiny creature measures only 0.094 mm long, and is an ectoparasite of harpacticoid copepods (which are themselves crustaceans).
kho
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