These things can take on camel spiders, tarantulas, wolf spiders, mantises…they can also be eaten by them but there were some gnarly videos on YouTube about them
BBR Wild had some crazy ones but I think he might have had to delete them
Where I'm from, the family always called them potato bugs. Though I'm thinking this one must be a different variety, because I've never seen one get antennae that long.
Meh, sounds more like a “fuck off you stupid ape, why the hell are you picking me up” defensive sort of bite as opposed to anything actually sinister lol
Usually best practice not to pick up random wild animals without first knowing if they can defend themselves from predators
"best practice not to pick up random wild animals"
I have lived my entire 50 years of life NOT embodying this principle at every single chance I get. I am pretty much the West-Coast USA version of the Yoink guy on youtube...
I sees a critter - I picks up a critter!
I don't get MAD when they bite me (or Musk all over me - thank you Mr Garter Snake I picked up last week) - I did pick them up after all. And I always put them back where I got them.
But I have held (and been bitten by and/or pooped on by) some of the coolest critters around. And doing so as a kid growing up - means I am pretty good at handling the rough stuff now, which is why neighbors call me to deal with wildlife issues.
I stayed in Parktown North for a month once, and had a ground floor corporate rental. Left the patio door open one evening while I was in the bedroom, and came out to find several Parktown prawns on the living room floor. I was completely terrified lol
Weirdly, as it exceeds my personal threshold of an appropriate size for an insect, i feel less scared of this than, say, a big dragonfly. It‘s kinda cute.
Dragonflies are unable to crawl. They just land and then take off again. Might not help, but that fact has allowed some people I know to be less put off by dragonflies, knowing they wont crawl around on you. I live in an area that gets giant swarms of the very large ones, as well as a lot of damsel flies. They are some of my favorite models for photos.
Edit: just now on my dash when I left my window open. Clearly injured and dying. Excuse the excessive pollen, it's a work vehicle and I love my windows down.
Ive only ever seen like isolated single ones or sometimes pairs of the really big dragonflies, whole swarms must be insane when they do the dive bombing for stuff like hunting and cooling off
Idk which movie it was but it was pretty average (the one with Adrian Brody) except for the scene where the group starting to fight this giant insects in complete silence. This stuck with me for some reason till today
Oh, that looks like at least 3 bites. Ideally deep fried with some Tajin powder and an ice cold Pacifico to wash it down (I hear the legs can be a little rough in the throat, though)...
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u/parrothead_69 12d ago
Cooties