World's longest insect discovered in Borneo

And a great name to go with it: "Chan's megastick" (above, displayed by Jane Lucas of London's Natural History Museum, and below).

How's 22 inches long — will that do?

Read all about it here, here, and here.

If you can't be bothered to click on a link, just keep on scrolling down for Nature.com's October 17, 2008 story.
....................

Longest insect is the stuff of nightmares

Please welcome the world’s longest insect. Measuring a horrifying 56.7cm (including legs) this stick insect has just been unveiled by the Natural History Museum in London and was described in the scientific literature for the first time this week.

In a paper in the journal Zootaxa, researchers Frank Hennemann and Oskar Conle propose a revision of the classification of oriental stick insects and along the way get around to describing seven new species.

The star of this show is the record-breaking Chan’s megastick (Phobaeticus chani). It was given to Malaysian entomologist Datuk Chan Chew Lun by a local man and then shown to UK scientist Philip Bragg, who recognized it as a new species. Chan then donated one of the three known specimens to the museum.

“We’ve known about both of the previous record holders for over a hundred years, so it is extraordinary that an even bigger species has only just been discovered,” says George Beccaloni (below),

stick-insect expert at the NHM.
.....................

More?

No problema.

Here's a video about the discovery, on the website of the Natural History Museum.

Read the original article published in Zootaxa here.