Location: Ohiopyle State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands. It was crawling across a wet bicycle trail after a rain.
Description: It was about 3-4 inches long (Maybe a little longer) and maybe 1/2 inch wide. Dark Black. It had 6 true legs and maybe 8-10 false legs on segments slightly tapering on the tail. On the end of the tail there was another set of what looked like pinchers which opened and closed as it walked and were strong enough to latch on to a small stick. It had large horizontal pinchers on its mouth. When threatened it moved backward by flexing its rear segments.
It looked more like a centipede (because of the multiple segments with false legs) than an insect though it only had 3 pairs of legs. We couldn’t tell whether or not it had eyes.
Looks to me like an earwig of some sort. Nasty little creatures. Thank your lucky stars you didn’t find an evil potato bug like they had where I lived in California. God those things scared me.
Yes, it was kind of earwig-shaped but much bigger and dark black. I should also mention that it’s body was flattened.
Also, the more I think about it the more I think that it was more like 4-6 inches long (sorry, We didn’t have a ruler). I would have kidnapped it but I didn’t think we should remove wildlife from a state park and damn we forgot the digital camera.
The linked sketch is crude but accurate, though it may have been longer and thinner than the picture suggests.
Yabob, that is right on. Thank you. It never occurred to me that it was a larvae. Something that big shouldn’t be allowed to turn into something bigger. I’ll stick with my initial 3-4 inch length estimate. In my head it gets scarier and bigger. Now that I can search on dobsonfly larvae I don’t see any pictures that are as black as the one I saw but that’s definitely what it is. It’s cool that it has gills.
I am far too squeamish to handle something like that in my hands.
One of the reasons I didn’t collect it was that I had this Frankenstein scenario by which it would escape and reproduce in my house.
