Giant cockroach discovered from Indian ocean

In an amazing yet scary discovery, a team of researchers has found one of the biggest cockroaches ever seen from the bottom of the Indian Ocean — a 14-legged giant cockroach!  

Cockroaches usually have six legs, however, this one nicknamed as the “deep sea cockroach,” were massive crustacean, which resembled the iconic character, Darth Vader, from Star Wars.

 

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During an expedition, there are some animals which you find unexpectedly, while there are others that you hope to find. One of the animal that we hoped to find was a deep sea cockroach affectionately known as Darth Vader Isopod. The staff on our expedition team could not contain their excitement when they finally saw one, holding it triumphantly in the air! #SJADES2018

A post shared by LKCNHM (@lkcnhm) on Apr 1, 2018 at 9:30pm PDT

It was first spotted by a team of researchers back in 2018, during an in-depth survey near the coast of Banten in Western Java in Indonesia.

Now, after 2 years, the cockroach has been identified as belonging to a new species and has been given the name “Bathynomus raksasa”.

Read More: A whole family of cockroaches lived inside this man’s ear?

The discovery in the Indian ocean was a joint effort by a team from the National University of Singapore and the Research Center for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

The scientist behind this name “Bathynomus raksasa”, Conni M Sidabalok, Helen PS Wong, and Peter K L Ng, suggested, “The epithet is the Indonesian word “raksasa” for giant, alluding to its enormous size and the significance of the find.”