Chan's Megastick
Britain museum notes discovery of a huge bug, the world's longest
Thu Oct 16, 8:48 PM
By The Associated Press
LONDON - A stick bug from the island of Borneo measuring well over 30 centimetres in length has been identified by researchers as the world's longest insect.
British scientists say the specimen was found by a local villager and handed to Malaysian amateur naturalist Datuk Chan Chew Lun in 1989.
Philip Bragg, who formally identified the insect in this month's issue of peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa, says the insect was named Phobaeticus chani, or "Chan's megastick," in Chan's honour.
Paul Brock, a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum in London unconnected to the insect's discovery, says there's no doubt it was the longest still in existence.
Looking like a pencil-thin shoot of bamboo, the dull-green insect measures about 56 centimetres, if its twig-like legs are counted.
Its body length is 35 centimetres, beating the previous record held by Phobaeticus kirbyi, also from Borneo, by about two centimetres.
Stick bugs have some of the animal kingdom's cleverest camouflage.
Although some use noxious sprays or prickly spines to deter predators, generally the bugs assume the shape of sticks and leaves to avoid drawing attention.
Brock says their main defence is basically just hanging around, looking like a twig. They sometimes just sway in the wind.
