Today I need your help. But first a warning: if looking at a bug gives you goosebumps, then
DO NOT WATCH!
Please don’t. If a creature like this slithered in my living room, I would call the police and buy another house!
But I still need to know what kind of insect this is. It was HUGE, and crossed my path in Portugal. It has the tail of an earwig, but it is easily ten, perhaps twenty times bigger than the Dutch version. Perhaps it was the Mother of all Earwigs. The Queen of Bugland.
I got real close. But if it would have spread its wings, I would have fainted.
Can you please help me in naming this beast?
UPDATE:
It is indeed a Mole Cricket, the Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa. They grow up to 4.5 centimeter… except ‘our’ specimen was MUCH bigger, it was as at least 7 centimeter! V-man says 7, but I say 10.
Thank you all so much for helping me out on this. Tim on Facebook thought it was a locust, Mike here and Selma through mail helped me to find the Mole Cricket. In Dutch it is called Veenmol. More Google images can be found here.
Another mystery solved. Now I can sleep again. I hope. But I fear the beast has burrowed its appearance into my retina… sweet dreams.
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