Crawly of the other kind

can anyone tell me what this is? It's not a weta, or is it one?

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Looks like a Weta to me. :eek:

It's a weta

A tree weta in particular, isn't it? Cool. Let it crawl onto something and then out into the open - away from cats and dogs!

Not only a tree weta, but a male tree weta. Females have a less ferocious looking head, and a long ovipositor on their rear end. She's bigger all over as well.

Everyone in my family thinks they are beautiful....I don't, in fact I think they are the MOST ugly of NZs crawly things, but I would never kill one, just get someone else to put it out, but I do kill cockroaches as I am really really scared of them!
(my daughter is known as 'the bug girl' at her school and is responsible for calmly picking up and putting outside cockroaches, wetas, bees etc that find themselves in the toilets [and laughing at the screeching girls] )

shad297;405360 wrote: ...my daughter is known as 'the bug girl' at her school and is responsible for calmly picking up and putting outside cockroaches, wetas, bees etc that find themselves in the toilets...

My daughter is fascinated with bugs (not quite 4) - she brought me a spider clamped between her hands yesterday and said "look at the spider I found Mummy" and opened her hands up...it was the biggest White-tail I've seen in quite some time! She had been playing with it for quite some time in her room. I'm glad we don't live in Aussie or any other place with poisonous creepy-crawlies, I can see I've instilled a fearless attitude in her towards bugs!

I too think they are beautiful and the species is thousands of years old.

Its good that the kids are encourages to handle them, sometimes as a parent its a little difficult to hide the squeemish...especially with slimy slugs and cockroaches.

I thought it wasn't a weta, because the last time i found one it had those very long back legs and this one doesn't :confused:

I'm not that into bugs and i dont like cockroaches, but i do not kill them either, unless they are in my house [!].
This one looked so "exotic" I let it go out of the bucket and it happily went off ...I'm glad it was still alive

well and truely a weta..and unlike previous posters, they are my biggest irrantional fear..
just yesturday i was trimming the hedge and one was looking back at me at eye level.. that was it for me.. OH had to finish job.. i found one more ( realy big bugga ).. so i called over my faithful chookie.. she thought it was brilliant and proceeded to smack it around..only thing was she was sooo proud of her prize she kept running up to me to show me..i was at a fast trot in the opposite direction squeeling .. OH was in fits of giggles ..
my skin was crawling for hours afterwards... yuk yuk yuk

kaumea;405416 wrote: I thought it wasn't a weta, because the last time i found one it had those very long back legs and this one doesn't :confused:

I'm not that into bugs and i dont like cockroaches, but i do not kill them either, unless they are in my house [!].
This one looked so "exotic" I let it go out of the bucket and it happily went off ...I'm glad it was still alive

Weta will show you those long back legs if they feel threatened. They hoist their legs up over their backs like little hiabs, to expose the spikes on that part of their legs. From there, they can exert a pretty powerful kick to a would be predator.