Comments on: Giant Water Bug – Toe Biter

By: shannon

shannon — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:32:53 +0000

I live i saginaw michigan and found a live one one the sidewalk at work! I was creeped out and amazed at the same time.. are they common in these areas? Ive never seen one before now.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:51:10 +0000

Thanks for this article! Found one of these {dead, thank goodness} in the parking lot yesterday and my cousin told me to look it up! I have three boys who LOVE to catch bugs and watch/study them so they were bummed he was already gone . I’ve just never seen anything so HUGE and in our area! Good information!

By: Tim Eisele

Tim Eisele — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:04:45 +0000

Bety: That’s pretty cool! I wonder how much of a freak occurrence that was? It would be really amusing if it turned out that a rubber worm with no hook could reliably catch giant water bugs.

By: bety

bety — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:50:07 +0000

recently went fishing in a mountain stream with a small rubber lure, when I pulled the line up there was a large toe biter on my lure, I looked closely and noticed that his sucker thing was imbedded in the lure, it was very strange. I went fishing and ended up catching a bug!

By: British columbia.

British columbia. — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:41:11 +0000

their instinct.they even eat little ducks and small snakes in the wild.It sometimes bite human,and it could be painful,so if you want to catch that one,you must be very careful.

By: Andrea Mae Agus

Andrea Mae Agus — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:45:29 +0000

why did the giant water bug eat the poor gold fish

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 03:23:49 +0000

Just had one of these drop next to me at a gas station in Fremont, WI. Brought it home to share with my girlfriend…she was not a fan.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 03:14:50 +0000

Sara, just as a follow up to your post about constructed wetlands..
I constructed a small pond on our rural property near Creston, B.C. this summer. I cracked a drainage pipe running about 3 feet under ground and ended up digging a pond which is about 30′ by 30′ and 3 feet deep. Today I noticed one of the goldfish floating in the water with 3 giant water bugs attached to it. As someone earlier had described, one of the eyes was missing and the
three bugs were all feeding off of it. How do we get rid of these things and what kind of density would they build up in a pond if left unchecked.
Bruce

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:15:21 +0000

Cool hunters. I wouldn’t want to get stung by that thing. I just finished a post on creatures of southeast asia.

http://calimike.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/three-creatures-of-southeast-asia/

Check out the Emerald Cockroach Wasp (#3) on my post and let me know what you think.

Best,
Mike

By: Sara

Sara — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:24:37 +0000

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your very informative post on the giant water bug. I work in Alberta, Canada as a wetlands educator, and we have had students catch this little beast in different wetlands across central and southern parts of the province. You can imagine the chorus of screams that erupt when a group of 9-year olds see this enormous bug trying to crawl out of their dip net!

Interestingly, all of the wetlands where we have encountered this bug were: 1) constructed wetlands, 2) stocked with fish, and 3) never observed in the spring, only in the fall. I’m unsure if there is any connection between the presence of the giant water bug and these wetland characteristics. My best guess is they are migrating to the constructed wetlands in the fall because they are deeper than nearby natural wetlands and offer a better chance of successful overwintering.

Cheers,
Sara