Saint Helena Giant Earwig

The largest earwig in the world

At 8.4 centimeters in length, the Saint Helena giant earwig was once the largest earwig in the world. Its body was about five centimeters long, its forceps 3.4 centimeters. For comparison: most other earwig species are one to two centimeters long.

As its name suggests, the earwig was endemic to the island of Saint Helena in the central Atlantic, where it probably fed on plants. Introduced mice and rats as well as the St. Helena hoopoe, which had already gone extinct at the beginning of the 16th century, were probably among its predators.

The IUCN is certain that these and other predators, such as spiders, as well as competition with the introduced centipede Scolopendra morsitans, are reasons for the species’ disappearance.

Yet the biggest problem was certainly the destruction of the earwig’s natural habitat to make room for house construction, because the giant earwig lived among other places in the gumwood tree forests of Saint Helena, which were largely destroyed over the years.

Saint Helena giant earwig – fact sheet

alternative names	St. Helena giant earwig, Saint Helena earwig, St. Helena earwig, St. Helena striped earwig, giant earwig
scientific names	Labidura herculeana, Labidura loveridgei
original range	Saint Helena (South Atlantic)
time of extinction	after 1967
causes of extinction	habitat loss, animals introduced to the island
IUCN status	extinct

Described in 1798, then forgotten for a long time

The type specimen of the Saint Helena earwig was collected in 1798 by the Danish zoologist Johann Christian Fabricius, who also first described the earwig scientifically. After that, the giant earwig no longer played a major role in science—until 1913, when the French naturalist Guy Babault collected a second specimen. It is now housed in Paris at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.

Yet even after that, no one took much interest in the earwig again for a long time, until this changed in 1962, when zoologists Philip Ashmole and Douglas Dorward were searching for bird bones on the island of Saint Helena and discovered astonishingly large forceps. They belonged to the Saint Helena giant earwig.

Because scientists often found forceps together with bird bones, it is assumed that the earwig also lived in bird colonies in the past.

Evidence for the earwig’s existence after 1967

Belgian scientists were able to locate living individuals of the giant earwig in the northeast of the island in 1965. By 1967, around 40 earwigs of this species had been collected. After that, there are no documented sightings of a living Saint Helena earwig anymore.

The London Zoo therefore carried out searches for the earwig in 1988 and 1993, Ashmole again in 2003, and Howard Mendel of the Natural History Museum in London once more in 2006—unfortunately all without success.

Fragments of dead individuals found by scientists in 1995 together with bird bones provide evidence that the Saint Helena giant earwig still existed after 1967. The find included, among other things, a subfossil forceps. Further parts of the giant earwig were found in 2013 and 2014, but in these cases it is not clear how old they may have been.

The IUCN considers it possible that the Saint Helena giant earwig still exists, but the evidence of recent years points more toward an extinct species.

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