A good many people never saw these bugs until they were found dead under the electric lights, and so they imagined they did not exist until electric lights were invented.
But that is a very foolish notion; the bugs were here thousands of years before electric lights were dreamed of.
The giant water bugs are not pleasant to handle when alive.
If you ever succeed in catching one in the water, which is not easy, they slip about so quickly, be sure and not take it in your fingers.
The California children call a species they have there "toe-biters," and they say they bite their toes when they go in wading.
The giant water bugs are the largest of living bugs, and they even kill and eat fish.
Their fore legs can shut up like a jackknife. The tibia shuts into a groove in the femur, and thus the bug is able to seize and hold its prey.
It clasps its victim in its arms, as it were, and calmly proceeds to suck out its blood.
In some species of the giant water bugs the female does not leave her eggs in the pond to take care of themselves; she puts them on the back of her mate, who is obliged to carry all of his progeny about with him until they relieve him by hatching out and swimming off to see life for themselves.