Monster Bug Is No Joke

It may look like a creepy-crawly April Fools’ joke but an expert on deep-sea species says a bizarre giant bug shown in pictures circulating on the Internet is the real deal. “I’ve seen the pictures, and they are real, and they really do get that big,” Craig McClain, assistant director of science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina. The gigantic bug was reportedly hauled aboard a remotely operated vehicle operating near an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. McClain said the creepy critter is an isopid, “like the rolypolys or pillbugs that you find in your garden.” But the deep-sea isopod is no cute little roly-poly – it grows to a size of 20 inches or more. The bug shown in the pictures that are currently making the rounds on the Web is on the “larger size” of the spectrum, measuring 30 inches in length, McClain said. However, the claims that the giant isopods are “something of a delicacy” in Taiwan, where they are boiled and served with rice at oceanside restaurants, may be a hoax. McClain said he has never heard of anyone eating them.