Identify this HUGE insect.

[Uncommon_Sense]

Well, huge for northern Wisconsin anyway. It was sighted up in the northern woods north of Antigo and south of Rhinelander. It tried to eat the victim in the photos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/BKolesari/NiceBug?authkey=Gv1sRgCOjGp5yRvcLGZA#

Any guesses as to it’s identity? It flies, by the way, making the damn thing even more demonic then it’s countenance would indicate.

[astro]

Water bug

[Uncommon_Sense]

@astro

Water bug

Holy bajesus, you’re correct. This must be one of the larger species I would imagine then.

[Fubaya]

I love the way the photos show it crawling up a pants leg, up a shirt, then all of a sudden the shirt is on the floor

[jayjay]

Be careful with them. Their bite hurts like hell!

[GuanoLad]

@Wikipedia

Though the systematics and phylogeny of the higher taxa of Nepomorpha were long controversial, cladistic analysis of mitochondrial 16S and nuclear 28S rDNA sequence data and morphology has more recently resolved to near-perfection. The long-accepted superfamilies are all monophyletic, with the exception of the Naucoroidea, which is now monotypic with the Aphelocheiridae and Potamocoridae being split off in a new superfamily Aphelocheiroidea. The Cibariopectinata, a clade established on the presence of cibariopectine structures in the food-sucking pump of some of the most advanced true water bugs (Tripartita), might be monophyletic. Alternatively it might be synonymous with the Tripartita, the Ochteroidea having lost the cibariopectines again due to the different requirements of their (for Nepomorpha) unusual lifestyle.

Aha. Right. Thought so.

[Derleth]

@GuanoLad

Aha. Right. Thought so.

I like how most of that was full of respectable science-sounding words until you get to the ‘food-sucking pump’. Some things are resistant to being prettified.