Stick Bugs

[holyoutlaw]

Herewith three pictures of a friend's stick bugs, with links to articles about each.

Aretaon asperrimus


Believe it or not, there are no general interest articles about this insect. There are technical articles about its walk, lots of pictures and hobbyist pages, but not even anything on Wikipedia! That's hard to believe.

The female carries the male on her back.



A. asperrimus eating


This had to be shot at a relatively rapid shutter speed to avoid motion blur. Thus the shallow depth of field.

Sipyloidea sipylus eye

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Those are bizarre! Not the usual praying mantis, which is what I associate "stick insect" with (and these are clearly somewhere in that family tree). I see that the scientific name you mention doesn't match anything in the Wikipedia article, so I guess I'm understanding correctly that these are some weird cousins, that deserve more prominence.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Actually, they're fairly common among people who keep insects. At least, if you google their names, there are numerous hits on the care and feeding (keep warm and moist and feed raspberry or ivy bramble, basically).

Praying mantises are mantids, and stick insects are phasmids.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!