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squarepeg0000 t1_jai7yid wrote

Giant...but they don't offer a description of their size.

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Littlebotweak t1_jai827n wrote

Well, if it was going to be in the US, it was going to be in the south.

Or yellowstone, I suppose.

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alvarezg t1_jai8g2k wrote

Lacking a banana for scale: "A giant lacewing has a wingspan of roughly 50 millimeters, which is quite large for an insect."

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Pickle_Slinger t1_jai8khe wrote

I find it hilarious to imagine a man grabbing a big outside a Walmart and carrying it around with him while shopping.

It’s also fascinating how coincidental this was. Makes me wonder how many scientific discoveries we walk by every day, but don’t realize because we don’t all have that same knowledge to identify something as specific as this.

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will_write_for_tacos t1_jaia8jk wrote

Replying to Pickle_Slinger (#2,138,801)

I found a salamander in Walmart while shopping once. I picked it up and carried it around with me for a bit until I could get out of the store, walk over to the retention pond, and let him go near the water. The poor thing was drying out, I have no idea how long he'd been in the store.

Weird shit happens in Walmart.

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Palana t1_jaicecx wrote

This article is clickbait. Google image search returned a lot of photos of living specimens. And the first result on Google lists its range as north and south america.

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Thunderhamz t1_jaitwx3 wrote

Hmm, a lot of species coming out as larger in their past, why? And why not the possibility of humans as well?

−3

GrannysPartyMerkin t1_jaivppf wrote

ANCIENT JURASSIC ERA MONSTER BUG………that was around until the 1950’s. This headline is 💩.

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m0i0k0e0 t1_jaj2imb wrote

Shoddy journalism:
No banana for scale.

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DaysGoTooFast t1_jaj5dhf wrote

Ancient Bug is still alive. See, this confirms lochness and Mokolembembe are living dinosaurs

/s

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will_write_for_tacos t1_jaj5r7k wrote

Replying to MSGinSC (#2,139,866)

Probably a similar tale as the frog who i discovered on my car while going 60mph down a country road. Made the husband pull over so i could rescue him and we turned him loose at a park. Just a fat happy gray tree frog who pissed all over my hand when I plucked him from the corner of my window.

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lilbean_arino t1_jaj76eo wrote

Jesus is taking back the states that sued against financial relief for student borrowers. Buckle up, Arkansas 🤣😂🤣😂😂

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MonsignorJabroni t1_jaje9hk wrote

Replying to Thunderhamz (#2,139,647)

It is well known and established that insects and other creatures were larger during dinosaur times because there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, amongst other things. Pretty much everything was bigger because it could absorb more oxygen and nutrients from the environment.

Human or proto human sizes have changed but we're taking like 100k years for humans, not 300 million years ago. As far as earth history is concerned, humans haven't been around long at all and haven't seen much change. Obviously we see change, but mother earth time is a different beast.

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palcatraz t1_jajjp1l wrote

Replying to MonsignorJabroni (#2,140,390)

That's not exactly correct.

Only insect size correlates to oxygen content in the air due to the manner in which they breathe. However, oxygen content is not the only limiting factor in size. The Carboniferous and early Permian are when insects sizes maxed out. This is before the age of the Dinosaurs (who didn't start appearing until the late Triassic). Up to this point, insect sizes and oxygen content in the air is well correlated.

This changes during the Jurassic. Insect sizes dropped after the Permian when the oxygen content in the air dropped low. However, even when the oxygen content in the air started increasing again, insect sizes continued to diminish in size. Reason? Birds had started to evolve. With birds now dominating the air, and in many cases, preying on insects, being large no longer held the same advantages as it once did.

And again, this is just for insects. Other terrestial animals, such as dinosaurs or mammals were never limited in size by oxygen content. That's because we have a far more efficient way of breathing than insects do.

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MonsignorJabroni t1_jajm4ob wrote

Replying to palcatraz (#2,140,592)

Thanks for correcting me, I wasn't sure on the specifics, I knew it was related to oxygen in a way. I appreciate the explanation that's really interesting.

I guess I was just a little amused by the implication of Giant Humans or something from the initial comment lol. Like no, we weren't 10 feet tall humans years ago, I'm pretty sure that's confirmed.

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palcatraz t1_jajmafi wrote

Replying to Thunderhamz (#2,139,647)

Various reasons.

Speaking specifically of insects -- the largest insects lived during the Carboniferous and early Permian. This is due to two reason. One is that oxygen content in the air was higher back then. Insects do not really have an advanced respiratory system. The second reason why insects grew to such large sizes during that time is because they lacked predators. They were the predators. Studying the history of insect sizes, we can see that the evolution of birds during the late Jurassic disrupts the relation between insect sizes and oxygen content. Even during times of rising oxygen, insect sizes remain smaller because when such a specialised group of insect hunters exists, being big isn't an advantage.

Now onto other creatures. Humans right now are bigger than we've ever been in our evolutionary history. We evolved from really tiny proto-primates, the size of squirrels. If we are looking just at our evolutionary history, we've grown tall. That said, there are limiting factors to being tall too in terms of physical health and resources needed. Humans are not very likely to grow much taller, because there is no real evolutionary pressure for us to do so. Often times in history when creatures have grown large, it was either to become a more efficient predator, or to become too big to be preyed on. But neither of those things really apply to us right now. We've shaped an environment in which our size doesn't really contribute much to our evolutionary success.

Now, as for other animals -- The age of dinosaurs really speaks to the imagination in terms of the size of creatures, but actually the largest creature to ever exist lives right now. In the ocean. The Blue Whale is the biggest thing that has ever existed on Earth. As for land animal sizes, Dinosaurs had some advantages that allowed them to grow that big -- hollow bones and airsacks means they were able to reduce their weight even when growing to enormous sizes. They still weighed massive amounts, but nothing like what any other animal would've weighted if you had sized them up to that size.

Right now, we do not have much surviving mega-fauna. And to be blunt, the reason for that is us. We are destroying the natural environment at a huge rate. While the change in climate at the end of the ice age had an effect on animal sizes (or more accurately, the extinction of several huge, cold-weather adapted animals), the way we are living now pretty much ensures that nothing as big as the animals that have once lived (except, again, the Blue Whale in the ocean, and we are threatening them too) is going to evolve again as long as we keep acting as we do. Being huge takes a lot of natural resources, and we aren't leaving any for anything but ourselves.

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8BitSk8r t1_jajn0sq wrote

Was it really a Jurassic-era insect or just your average Walmart shopper?

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OvenIcy8646 t1_jajrdx7 wrote

Damn Arkansas really is trying to turn the clocks back

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pinkyfitts t1_jajuk88 wrote

A prehistoric insect on Arkansas? That’s just one of the Huckabees.

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Serverpolice001 t1_jak0tmu wrote

This b must be confused at why no flowers and eggs r so small

0

konqueror321 t1_jak74sp wrote

And by giant they mean 2 inch wingspan. And by Jurassic era they mean it was widely found until about 1950 or so, but not seen since then.

But otherwise the headline is spot-on!

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Reidroshdy t1_jal8gom wrote

Headline made me think that the bug had been though extinct since the dinosaurs died.

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_Levitated_Shield_ t1_jaldxo5 wrote

Half a century ago was apparently the Jurassic. TIL.

Who the hell wrote that headline?

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adamw7432 t1_jall6f6 wrote

Replying to DoodleDew (#2,138,881)

Exactly my thoughts. I've seen tons of bugs that I swore I never saw before that looked really strange. And then I walked away assuming that it was just a bug that people already know about and I just never noticed until that moment. Makes you wonder how often stuff like this happens. Like those people in Australia that filmed the super rare whale that just swam up on them.

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MuppetShart t1_janqprd wrote

Replying to will_write_for_tacos (#2,140,070)

Wait, so you just let the frog go right there? I hate to break it to you but he didn't tell his froggy friends any tale at all, you dropped him off probably a hundred miles away from home in frog distance. His poor froggy wife, all his little tadpoles, never saw him again.

On the other hand, maybe he knew what he was doing all along and just hitched a ride back on someone else's car. His wife was all, "you never made it to uncle Fred's?" and he was like, "well, I tried, we were well on our way but then the car pulled over and some lady got out and picked me up talking about 'you're safe now, little froggy' and then set me down and drove off without me!" and then the wife, "how inconvenient. Did you pee on her hand?" him, "I peed on her hand."

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MuppetShart t1_janye1b wrote

Replying to will_write_for_tacos (#2,146,692)

I get exactly where you're coming from, I save creatures all the time. I'll even sweep ants up in a dustpan and bring them outside my house. That's trickier than it sounds, you have to shake them off the dustpan into a larger container and transfer them that way, otherwise you won't make it to the door. They don't realize I'm sparing them from the most common fate of being sprayed with poison, so naturally they go ape-shit running up and down and off the dustpan.

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