Whenever I meet someone overseas considering a visit to New Zealand, they’ll often drone on and on about how much they love our wonderful wildlife, and how they can’t wait to see kiwis and tuataras. This, I have found, is the perfect time to whip out a picture of a giant weta – which invariably provokes gasps of horror. With menacing bodyplans shaped by the harsh NZ landscape, the best word to describe these insects would be “hardcore”. To help classify the 100+ species crawling around Aotearoa, scientists have identified five unique groups of weta; tree, ground, cave, giant, and tusked. It’s pretty intuitive – tree weta live in trees, cave weta live in caves, and tusked weta look like the devil’s henchmen. All of them are nocturnal, helping them avoid the many many birds flying around in the day.
I’ve had the joy of seeing these monsters up close, albeit during the day when they share similar characteristics to a teenager at 6am. At Zealandia, I got to tag along on a couple of giant weta surveys – which was essentially just me and another volunteer running around looking in various boxes. These boxes were designed as perfect hidey holes for any wandering weta perusing the reserve. Upon discovering an invertebrate inside, we would record it. Species, gender, approximate size and age were all recorded in a handy leaflet – which we would later enter into a spreadsheet. Riveting stuff I know, but we weren’t always recording just weta. A couple of times I had the wonderful privilege of taking off a lid to reveal a box of angry tunnelwebs – which as an arachnophobe was very harrowing.
8/10 – Extra points for being extra and evolving tusks