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Stick Insect

John53

I go leaps and bounds
Premium Member
Was heading off for a shower and saw this bloke or blokette sitting on the front door. It's the biggest stick insect I've seen. @Dan From Smithville kind of suits the camo discussion we were having the other day.

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And a close-up of what I think is the head end. Edit: it's actually the back end, thanks to @danieldemol for pointing that out.

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ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Saw the title and thought you were having a go at me :oops: but,wow, thats a big one.


A stick
 

Audie

Veteran Member

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member

John53

I go leaps and bounds
Premium Member
Found it, it was on the neighbours garage window in a previous house we lived at. I don't know if it's the same order.

920022_10200796711336324_1684391928_o.jpg
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Found it, it was on the neighbours garage window in a previous house we lived at. I don't know if it's the same order.

920022_10200796711336324_1684391928_o.jpg
Related. It is a katydid or long-horned grasshopper in the order Orthoptera. The walking sticks are related and both have been lumped together under the umbrella term of orthopteroid orders along with mantids in the Mantodea and a few others groups.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Found it, it was on the neighbours garage window in a previous house we lived at. I don't know if it's the same order.

920022_10200796711336324_1684391928_o.jpg
Kind of curious why you have your camera ready around you neighbors garage window. What was going on in there?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Just a quick and dirty discussion of the insects, since this seems like an appropriate place to do it and you may find it useful.

Living things are described based on different traits they possess. Morphological, developmental, genetic, ecological and behavioral differences have all been used to describe, differentiate and sort living things into various categories to show relationships. These are the traditional kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, species structure most of us learned about in school.

Insects are a class of animal in the phylum Arthropoda. Not to belabor or belittle what we all know, they have three body regions, six legs and are invertebrates. The class is represented by about 30 orders which are the groups we are most commonly familiar with. Springtails, firebrats/silverfish, bristle tails and a few other groups are more adaptively primitive and are sometimes grouped as a sister subclass to the the other orders. The orders we are often most familiar with by common name (with exceptions) are cockroaches, termites, grasshopper/crickets, mantids, walking sticks, mayflies, stoneflies, book lice, leaf hoppers/tree hoppers, true bugs, lice, beetles, flies, Neuroptera (scorpion flies, Dobson flies, hangingflies), caddisflies, butterflies/moths, flies, wasps/bees and fleas. There are a few other, smaller orders I have not mentioned, but those mentioned represent the bulk of the fauna. They are the most numerous (over 1,000,000 million descried species) known group of animals on the planet. Beetles are the most species rich group of living things and nearly 350,000 species are known. Roughly, every third animal you encounter will be a beetle. Like @Sgt. Pepper the beetles are my favorite group. Though her favored version differs from mine.

Insects exploit every habitat we know of except the marine aquatic habitat that is the domain of other, sometimes related invertebrates. They are likely the first winged, flying thing to exist and probably the first noisy living things. They come in exotic shapes, colors and variations. Their morphology, biology and habits are endlessly fascinating and wonderous. I was bitten by a love of these animals as a child and have never recovered.
 
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