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Giant Weta — printable fact sheet
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Giant Weta
Deinacrida spp.
The giant wetas of New Zealand, genus Deinacrida, are flightless, nocturnal, cricket relatives that survived on islands with no land mammals and consequently grew heavy rather than fast. The wetapunga of Little Barrier Island (Deinacrida heteracantha) is the heaviest, with gravi…
Did you know?
- The heaviest recorded giant weta weighed 71 grams—more than a common house sparrow.
- The Maori name wetapunga is often glossed as "god of ugly things", a reference to Punga, ancestor of sharks and lizards. Giant wetas cannot jump well and cannot fly at all, so their entire anti-predator strategy is to look alarming and smell bad. The alpine weta of Otago can spend months frozen solid each winter, one of the largest animals known to tolerate internal ice formation.
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