By Tim Binnall
A woman in Georgia was left scratching her head when she stumbled upon a bizarre-looking insect that she likened to a "huge mutant dragonfly." Nicole Doctor of Atlanta reportedly spotted the strange creature while she was out walking her dog and noticed something in the street that was "squirming around violently." Upon closer inspection, she saw that the undulating oddity was a weird insect that appeared almost stitched together out of various bug parts akin to Frankenstein's monster.
"It was an amalgamation of a cockroach and dragonfly," Doctor recalled, "but the size of a millipede." Since the unsettling insect also happened to be "creepy and cool," she pulled out her cell phone and captured the creature on film. Upon posting the footage to social media, Doctor received hundreds of responses either from people aghast at the bug's appearance or offering their best suggestions for what it could have been.
It was ultimately determined that the insect was a male dobsonfly that just so happened to be in distress. Etymologist Lyle Buss explained that the insect seemed to be struggling to unfurl its wings. Whether the creature managed to accomplish the feat is a mystery as the insect was gone when Doctor walked her dog through the same area the following day. One need not shed too many tears for this particular dobsonfly as the male's life span is a shockingly short three days even under the best of circumstances.