This is the second Giant creature in our two part series “Two Giant Creatures”.
Today we are taking a moment to appreciate the The Giant Prickly Stick Insect (Extatasoma tiaratum). It is also sometimes known as the Spiny Leaf Stick Insect and McLeay’s Spectre. Why pay homage to this particular beast? Because it is enormous and funny looking. Admirable traits in an insect. It has long claws but does not appear to be excessively fierce. The females have spikes all over their bodies for self defense which would seem sensible.
As said Fagan said in Oliver Twist “Stick Insects, you can pick them up and you can put them back down again”.
A Giant Prickly Stick Insect
It is also popular to keep Giant Prickly Stick Insects as pets. Not with the Giant Prickly Stick Insects though, they would no doubt be opposed to the whole idea. Although there is something to be said for life in captivity, guaranteed food and safety it is likely that if you are a Giant Prickly Stick Insect that something is “Let me out, you brute”! Why don’t we let all the Giant Prickly Stick Insects free? Remember, if you love something, set it free, if it comes back to you it is yours, if it doesn’t it never was, and if you look on the bush where you put it half an hour ago and it’s still there it is because it is a stick insect and they don’t go very fast.
Giant Prickly Stick Insect Facts:
Did you know that Giant Prickly Stick Insects are ”heavy-bodied, brachypterous and (having) numerous spines and integumental expansions on the body and legs, including a tuft of spines on the conical occiput of the hypognathous head”? I did, and now you do too.
Your average Giant Prickly Stick Insect eats eucalyptus leaves, although they have been known to eat Hawthorn, Oak, Pyracantha, Raspberry, Rose and the entire Essendon Football Club on the head of a pin.
They are native to Australia.
Did you know that when disturbed, adult male Giant Prickly Stick Insects release an odour that is rather reminiscent of peanut butter or toffee? (not unlike some of the people here at Crikey). True!
My all time favourite stick joke:
What is brown and sticky?
A Stick!
LOL!
Oh stop it.
Anyway, our work experience guy Perry tracked down a couple of Giant Prickly Stick Insect facts that even I didn’t already know: 1. Giant Prickly Stick Insects do not do work experience. 2. When threatened they blend into their background by “looking like a stick”. The big ones look like logs.
We stayed at a holiday house in Hawks Nest this one time (not the same one that former Prime Minister John Winston Howard used to stay at, although someone did point out the hotel where he did stay and I remember thinking “Really, he stayed there?”). Anyway, on the gate between the barbecue area and the backyard at our holiday house there was this stick insect and I swear I had never seen anything like it, it was huge. HUGE! We all freaked out and ran around even though it just sat on the fence and looked like a stick. It was not well camouflaged. It would have been better if it had been a Giant Flattish Fence Insect. And then it flew away and the hum of it’s giant wings was, well, quite loud. It is the males who have the wings.
So there you have it.
Thanks to Sticky and Inny for being today’s inspiration.
9 Comments
this one is hard. The best I can come up with is;
Obviously Peter Costello is NOT a “Giant Prickly Stick Insect”, because you note that “It is also sometimes known as the Spiny Leaf Stick Insect”, and Peter was never accused of anything to do with Spines….
Is it true that super models are closely related to stick insects?
Pretty dangerous place if you ask me to hang around for something that looks like a stick, near a barbecue. Unless you’ve got a large bunch of mates that look like Little Lucifer TM Firestarters, or bottles of kerosene, to hang with you.
I’m impressed by your’ finding a reference to stick insects in Victorian Literature. (No, Kevin, Dickens isn’t from Queensland)
I can’t let the opportunity presented by this giant insect discourse pass without mentioning the situation for our Trans Tasman cousins. (Well I could, but I won’t.)
Apparently, because NZ split off from Gondwanaland before mammals evolved, ( how dumb, to not let mammaries evolve) they are no native mammals in New Zealand, that’s if you don’t count New Zealanders. Result: a giant insect evolved to fill the ecological niche otherwheres filled by rats .
Wetas (from the maori language, wētā punga = God of Ugly things) are carnivorous, up to 8 inches long, and 70g, with tusks, used in defence displays which consist of looking large and spiky, and for poking, but they also have powerful mandibles, all the better to bite kiddie New Zealanders with. It’s the males, which have much larger jaws than the females, that hiss and bite when threatened. New Zealand Morepork Owls, Ninox novaeseelandiae, ( maori = ruru, ) reckon there’s nothing like a weta kebabs for night-time feasting.
I’m not going to include a link to a close up picture, because dear readers who dare to look might never get a good nights sleep again, and I don’t want to be held responsible. You’ve all seen Alien haven’t you? Like that, only for real. My flat mate has a scar from his eye to his ear and he said he got that when he was a kid and went to be nice to a weta.
What makes them even more scary is that one weta, the Mountain stone weta, can survive being frozen for months at a time in a state of suspended animation down to temperatures of -10°C. This is because their haemolymph (the insect equivalent of blood) contains special proteins which prevent ice from forming in their cells.
Now weta can interbreed, so these chilled out ones could be crossed with their more aggro Bad-Speed-Crazed Auckland Suburban Rugby Hoon weta cousins in a secret NZ defence force breeding program, and put in cold storage till there’s enough, and we’re talking a Dr Who episode. They haven’t found a weta that can fly, yet. But wetas that could fly but didn’t want to be found, wouldn’t, would they?
All I can say is if they invent a new sport, and the New Zealanders field a team called the Wetas, don’t even think about playing.
Peter Costello is not hypognathous either. Chinless wonder!
Imagine having less spine and worse capacity to take it on the chin than the wonderful Giand Prickly Stick Insect.
Although Malcolm Turnbull has prickliness enough for the entire opposition.
There’s always Opuntia ficus indica the Giant Spineless Prickly Pear but can you anthropomorphise a cactus?
What lives in gum trees?
Stick insects!
I would like to be re-incarnated as a stick insect.
Well firstdog, it’s taken quite a while. But I’ll see your stick insect and raise it with the world’s longest URL
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Emailed-Photos/ss/1756;_ylt=Arwp65v4QxCeDN2v9kgfBR3mWMcF#photoViewer=/081016/481/0b38e8c2d06f421fb342e4a585b6b9ca
To reveal the world’s longest stick insect. So there. :)
Bloody McCain!! Is there no depth to which he’ll sink?
Eating the world’s longest URL is bad enough. But what about the poor stick insect?
Anyway, here’s a shorter URL to a nice article with pics of the poor beastie.
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1017-longest_insect.html
can i swap spiny stick insect egg for goliath stick insect egg ?