Giant insect as big as your hand!

Massive giant weta insect as big as your hand

By David Pescovitz at 10:17 am Friday, Dec 2

This is a giant weta, an insect found on New Zealand's Little Barrier Island. But this isn't just any giant weta. It's reportedly the largest ever found, weighing in at 71 grams.

"She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away," (said Mark Moffet, a former US park ranger who found it in a tree.) "She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn't want to risk indigestion.
"After she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her."

"World's biggest insect is so huge it eats carrots" UPDATE: From Stuff.co.nz:

Landcare Research entomologist Dr Thomas Buckley says, based on Moffett's photos, the weta's size looks about average for its species.
"The species itself is the heaviest in the world but whether that individual is the heaviest you couldn't really say.
"From the picture it's a female, but it just looks like an average sized one of that species."