Has there ever been records of Giant Insects During The Human Eras?

I just came up with a question a minute ago. Has there ever been a recorded case of giant insects in human history. I know as many of you do that there were in the Mezizioc era. But I dont want any answers involving that im more intrested in modern or old cases of Giant bugs in human times?

But I dont want any answers involving that im more intrested in modern or old cases of Giant bugs in human times?


What? i dont know what you mean by that...

sorry i mean answers involving giant bugs in the mezizoic area

This is the Worlds largest Bug.


It was built in 1980 and is located in Providence, Rhode Island.
www.roadsideamerica.com...

Sorry, I had to do that. The real biggest bug isn't that interesting or that big.

This is the Goliath beetle. it is about 4.5 inches and weighs 3.5 ounces.
www.extremescience.com...


This is the biggest spider, the goliath bird-eating spider.
www.extremescience.com...

Then there is the longest insect.

The stick insect can grow as long as 14 inches.
www.nfi.org.za...

Googling is fun.
Man its quite tonight only 76 members signed in. I should go to bed.

If I'm not mistaken, the square-cube law makes the existence of gigantic insects physically impossible...

...unless you're watching the abomination that Hollywood perpetrated on the genius Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers.

Not sure what the square cube law is and I'm too lazy to look it up. I do however know that insects do not have an active circulatory system, aka no heart, no blood. If I recall correctly (been a good while since undergrad biology) they use a lymphatic system. Basically its an effective circulatory system for small sized creatures, but it would simply be impossible for "giant" insects. Also I believe that the exoskeleton system would not support a creature of very large size. Eventually you will need some sort of inner frame work to support a "giant" creature.

So in two part answer to your question, there have been no documented cases of "giant" buggies in human times, and it is probably physically impossible for a giant bug to exist (at least on land) without some rather hefty evolutionary changes.

the bigest bug ever was a dragon fly with a get this 3 FOOt wing spane
.But ov corse It was more about how it looked then accutal size.
it probly weighed no more then a few ounces.

It depends on your definition of giant.

I mean, what do you consider giant? Like the size of a cat or something? Or do you mean like Harry Potter Giant Spider size? It doesn't matter though because a spider is not an insect, it's an arachnid, but you get my point.

At any rate, an exoskeleton limit can be much larger than many argue. Look at crustaceans such as a lobster. Just recently there was a bunch of hubub about a giant lobster weighing 22 pounds. It was huge. Crustaceans have an exoskeleton and can grow to enourmous sizes.

No, I'm not saying a lobster and an insect are the same thing. One obviously lives in water and therefore has a different set of physics that determin many growth factors. However, I do think it is possible for various insects currently alive to become much larger than they currently are.

One only has to look at the common cockroach. In many locations in the United States they can commonly grow to over three inches in size, with measured to be as big as five inches. An exoskeleton allows for extreme growth in short genetic lines, meaning only a few generations are needed to modify the size and lifespan of an insect.

For more information on how quickly insects genetic makeup can be changed, look at the study on the lifespan of the fruit fly.

www.mercola.com...

There is some interesting stuff here about grow rate in insects and how it relates to life span.

All in all, I think it will be possible, given the right circumstances, for large insects to once again roam the earth.

The exoskeleton of giant arthropods works well for marine creatures becuase of boyancy. Exoskeletons simply don't allow extreme sizes on land. Giant cockraoches really aren't that big at all, at least I wouldn't consider a few inches as giant. Like simcity said, those giant dragonflies were mostly wing. I could imagine a creature that was fairly large in two dimensions, maybe like a really long centipede or something, but a critter that was large in 3d wouldn't hold up.

i think there were about few hundred years ago in exotic islands were no people were some sort of HUGE BEE's there hives were size of houses and the bee was huge they are extinct now so some insects can be huge, good job they are extinct too do a google for em.

Huge bee's? Are you referring to this:
www.zeta.org.au...

I'm sure their hives were hardly as big as a house.

I saw a documentary a few months ago that reviewed how differant species evoved and the ones that became insects were inverdabraes with exo-skelitons and they could not servive over 3 ft without the bouyancy of the oceans.

The Giant Weta is reported to have been the largest insect discovered.

"The endangered giant weta of Little Barrier Island, New Zealand, is reliably credited with a maximum weight of 71 grams..."

"...According to Dr. Mary IcIntyre, weights up to 43 grams."

Link

So no Jurassic park i'm afraid.

I saw a two foot cockroach "prehistoric" once, so they can get big. The theroy is that, if you take modern ones, and put them in High O2 atmosphere, they will grow very large. Might be fun. Theroy is that the Earth had a higher 02 level in the old days. Has this ever been tried?

Wait just a minute! You can put people on poor diets, they are small, put them on good diet, and they grow big. Note Chinese people, when they emigrate, or are feed well, in one generation, they can go from 5 foot to 7 ft. Bugs, never stop growing, neither do most reptiles. Changing size and changing species are two different things. Look at Rosie O’Donnell, she changed her size. She is a least two times larger than normal and she is still the same species, liberal.
So, my simple question was, if 02 is the limiting factor, and we changed that would something happen to the cockroach, and has anyone tried this? Not guessed at it, that is not science. How hard could it be to put some cockroaches in a high 02, tank, and watch what happens?

This may seem like a dumb question.
Can you guys tell me what O2 is?

sorry, 02 is oxygen. free oxygen will bond with another free oxygen, rapidly, so it the norm to call it O2. 0 meaning oxygen, and 2 noteing the number thereof. But, here we should just say oxygen.

Thats what I thought you guys were saying. I know O is the atomic symbol for Oxygen. I just didn't understand what the 2 was doing here if it was not bonded with another element. Chemistry is defiantly not my strong point .

Great. Now we are on the same page here.
So what is being said here then is that in prehistoric times there was more oxygen than there is now?
Today the atmosphere is 21%. in the past 360 million years the highest it could of been is 35% .
I've been looking all over I can't find anything that says there was more oxygen in pre-man times.
I would of thought there would of been more CO2 if anything.

The Blue whale is the biggest thing that ever lived. It is breathing the same air as the rest of the creatures on Earth.

I wasn't making any claims of prehistory, I just wanted to know what would happen if you put cockroaches in a high Oxygen environment, since oxygen is the limiting factor, and I saw that great big one. Maybe, there is a link between size and oxygen. That is all.

I looked on the medline database and I could find no indication of increased cockroach growth in response to oxygen, though several studies did exist which used oxygen in short term exposures.

Simply speaking, while I don't think anyone has tried gworing cockroaches in a long-term hyperoxygenated environment, I doubt it would do anything., even IF prehistoric oxygen levels accounted for the increased size limits. It has been millions of years since the atmosphere contained high amounts of oxygen and the decline was a gradual process. This means that over the years smaller cockroaches were probably genetically selected as this is a more simple evolutionary answer than evolving a mechanism allowing for a cockroach to change its growth rate based on the environmental oxygen. Remember that in the lifespan of the cockroach, oxygen concentration would be fairly unchanging, so such a mechanism would be difficult to select for evolutionarily. The example of Chinese people reaching larger sizes upon emmigration is an example of what malnutrition can do. It is more likely that the cockroach is not "malnurished" by present oxygen levels, but has simply evolved a smaller size limit to adjust to decreasing levels.

If someone wants to try it, feel free. It wouldn't be difficult at all. The reason no one has is most likely because it is both improbable, and it serves little purpose. Can you imagine funding a grant that proposed to grow bigger cockroaches?

[edit on 23-3-2005 by contraa]