#stick insect egg

[briery]

Insect eggs from left to right: clusters of Atlas moth eggs; Saturniid moth eggs; Madagascan comet moth eggs; Extatosoma tiaratum eggs (Macleay’s Spectre Stick Insect); Heteropteryx dilatata eggs (Jungle Nymph Stick Insect).

[haldenlith]

Started watching Dungeon Meshi, and I won't lie, there's a part of me that wants to try recreating IRL versions of the dishes. I've already seen someone successfully do a version of the sorbet, and it looked awesome -- though a nitpick is that I think they used rainbow sherbet. Then again, I imagine it'd be a pain to make rainbow sorbet.

Though... I imagine it'd be good. Could use coconut for the white, maybe taro for the purple (and it'd complement the coconut flavor), mango for the yellowy bit (would add some nice fruity zing)... Perhaps use pea flower tea for the blue (if it's as "green tea" flavored like as people claim in flavor, it could round out the flavors...). Hm.

ANYWAY, only a part of me is tempted. The rest of me is either too lazy, or too broke to pull something like that off. The cost of food... oof. The first dish, for example, would be pricey no matter how I slice it. I feel like the best dupe for the "huge scorpion" would be a lobster. (Okay, the real best substitute is giant scorpion, but that's too damn hard to track down fresh and requires too much effort to prepare -- the poison glands won't kill you, but you won't have a great time if you eat them.) The slime monster noodles would be cassava noodles, hands down. The rest is easy, standard ingredients.

Ah well, fun to imagine the ways to recreate the dishes.

[natureisthegreatestartist]

Who knew that stick insects have such extraordinary eggs?

[slowlydecomposingcorpse]

I just noticed that some sort of insect is apparently laying eggs* on the window of the door to our balcony. what the hell

[kaijubrains]

My stick insects had babies today! This absolute beast is a whopping 1cm long

[futurebird]

Clay Arts Alert.

This is the idea... make a series of large fired vases based on stick bug egg cases. Just look at them!

This would be SUCH an amazing exhibition.

Every bug nerd on the planet will covet your vases.

Nature provides free ip!

(with my luck someone *will* do this & I'd never be able to afford one LMAO)

Images from this paper: Evolution of Oviposition Techniques in Stick and Leaf Insects (Phasmatodea)

[inthecityofgoodabode]

April 2024: The Last Sunday

Trying to imitate the first person view in a video game:

There is a nest in our clematis:

[wormyorchids]

Phasmid egg stickers are a reality!

[badolmen]

bwa

[bogleech]

Many parasites takeover the minds and bodies of insects, spiders or other creatures, making them like zombies. You’ve listed some in spider-ween and other places. Do you know any parasites that take over bees? I know wasps lay their eggs in their larva, but haven’t really found anything about those that pilot a bee’s body.

Strepsipterans! Also frequently just called "Stylops"

These are the weirdest most alien insect group in existence. What you're seeing are the head ends of the mature females; their bodies are just bags of tissue that absorb nutrients from the host, so they no longer have any trace of limbs or wings and their flat little heads no longer have mouths or eyes.

The only reason the female's heads stick out of the host at all is because the head evolved into the end they mate with. The short-lived mature male is a very tiny flying thing (whose anatomy is unlike any other insect alive today - a totally unique type of wing, unique eye arrangement, we have NO idea what these evolved from, except for some loose connections to beetles!) who mates by breaking through the female's featureless armored face with his bladed genitalia and then he dies. And Strepsiptera can be found infecting all sorts of arthropods, even apparently some arachnids, but none of those arthropods really tend to sit still when a little tiny flying man tries to land on them, so the females usually do something to their hosts (we aren't sure what exactly) to make them slower and more complacent. Social Hymenoptera like bees are especially common hosts though, and when a worker bee or wasp is infected by stylops, she actually abandons her colony and her duties for extended periods of time to just perch in one place while the parasite broadcasts its mating pheromones. This is especially eerie from the bee's perspective; a worker bee is a female bee that wasn't allowed to become a queen and isn't "supposed" to be going around mating, but now she's sitting around waiting for a male just like any other bug that wants to be a mom. It's just not a male of her species and she's not the one who gets to reproduce. Is the parasite tapping into buried queen behavior? Does the bee's little brain think it's calling for a drone to help it start a new hive? Or does the parasite just make the bee a lazy slob who stops caring about her hive and just feels like chilling out on a flower all day? We might never know.

Here are those unique eyes of the male for anyone wondering. Not set in a fine multifaceted grid like in other insects, but clustered, still set in their own individual "sockets" like we see in much more ancient arthropods like trilobites! This suggests that Strepsipteran eyes date back to when insects were first beginning to evolve towards true compound eyes, but there still aren't many insects in the fossil record that have anything else in common with these animals. EDIT: oh yeah I forgot to include that these are in the children's book made by @revretch and I!

I did the rough pencil sketch of this page while Rev did the beautiful inks! I felt kids should know about these animals but I tried to explain it in the most kid-friendly way possible.

[briery]

A collection of eggs produced by different stick insect species (Phasmida) Even within one type of insect, the eggs can take on all sorts of different looks, with many looking like ancient pottery. (Photo: Drägüs)

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

what compels you about the Lord howe island stick insect?

its supposed extinction was such a mundane tragedy, this entire population of insects on an isolated island wiped out by the unintentional introduction of rats aboard a ship. it's a fairly common byproduct of colonization, native species being outcompeted by rivals they never should have encountered at all. you so rarely hear about insects impacted by it though, because so few people care about insects even when they're dying out completely.

except they didn't die out. they were thought to be extinct for almost a century, until in 2003 researchers confirmed a surviving population on, of all places, Ball's Pyramid, a volcanic and inhospitable spire of rock twelve miles from Lord Howe Island. not an insurmountable distance, but pretty vast if you're a flightless stick bug. how did they even get out there? no one knows. but they were there, just 24 insects who were supposed to be dead all huddling under a shrub together.

researchers took four of them back to Australia to start breeding programs. at the Melbourne Zoo they've bred them in the thousands now, and they've started contingency programs at a few other zoos worldwide. they're still considered critically endangered, at tremendous risk of extinction, but there are cautious plans to start reintroducing them to Lord Howe Island, when it can be ascertained that the island will be safe for them. there are still European rats that need to be exterminated, and a fungus threatens the plants that the stick insects rely on. there's still a population on Ball's Pyramid, but it's perilously small. their future in the wild isn't certain by any means.

but they're alive, and there are thousands more of them than there would be if no one had gone looking for them. if all the stick insects on Ball's Pyramid get sick or drown or are eaten by seagulls tomorrow, there will still be Lord Howe Island stick insects in the world, and it's all because some people decided that these bugs deserve a second chance and dedicated their entire lives to giving them one. Paige Howorth, the director of invertebrate care and conservation at the San Diego Zoo, the first zoo to successfully breed the insects outside of Australia, said this:

My most vivid memory has to be the very surreal experience of flying back to the San Diego Zoo in 2016 with 300 critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect eggs in my backpack.... I’ll never forget counting out the eggs with the Melbourne wildlife health and care teams, who surface-sterilized them pre-flight, so that they could come home with me with a lowered risk upon hatching. The idea that we were finally bringing this incredibly rare species back to San Diego to make their global population a little more secure made me hug that backpack closer. And yes, I did take them to the bathroom with me on the flight. (x)

whenever people start rambling about how humanity is inherently evil or selfish or whatever I think about shit like this. a woman hugging a backpack full of 300 eggs close for a 13 hour flight, just to give some bugs a chance. imagine.

they're also called tree lobsters, which I think is just rad.

[emmaklee]

Phasmid eggs | Levon Biss

these are actual eggs of the stick insect family

[todaysbird]

the jabiru is a large stork found from mexico to argentina; they are also semi frequently found as vagrants in the united states. their name comes from a tupi–guaraní language and means "swollen neck". the jabiru is the second-largest bird in south america, and the largest flying bird (they fall behind the flightless rhea in size). their wingspan is also the second largest on the continent, just behind the andean condor. while colorations and markings are the same between males and females, the species is easy to differentiate by sex; males are notably larger, up to 25% larger than females. this species feeds primarily on fish, frogs, insects, and other aquatic prey; however, they are opportunistic feeders, and will feed on carrion and even have been documented eating house mice. they can be helpful in the bodies of water they live in, as they will eat recently deceased fish, preventing them from contaminating the water. they feed mainly by tactile sensing, not by visually locating their prey; they will snap up prey from the water as soon as their bill brushes against it. the jabiru is believed to mate for life. jabiru build massive stick nests, which are reused for future clutches; however, it usually is several years after a successful breeding before jabiru will have another clutch of eggs. this is due to their young fledging at approximately 110 days, then sticking with their parents for around another three months. jabiru have been known to live until their mid-thirties.

[donutz]

Catnap & Dogday being silly with reader

Request from Wattpad—! Here you go Zeki aph☆

—☆You are a smiling critter in this, if u want to know which one(but don't know what animal or insect to pick) you could start out as a sheep!

It’s early in the morning, and the kids have woken up(some of them, those are the early birds).

You and PickyPiggy help out with the breakfast, surprisingly you two never get tired of it.

PickyPiggy is very familiar with food so of course she won't get bored, but you? It can be confusing on why you never get tired.. Of cooking and baking for the kids.

Both of you cook everyday, at least for breakfast. Cooking over 500 pancakes, bacon(sometimes), and eggs isn't thattt bad!!

That's what PickyPiggy and you say.

So while you were cooking pancakes, you were by yourself. PickyPiggy already took care of the bacon. Seems.. Weird. Because y'know, bacon is pork. But she doesn't know that so let's keep it a secret.

You had 400 already done, just 100 left. Then you and Picky have to work together to set the table and place down the plates of food.

You finished pouring out the batter for a few pancakes then sat down somewhere on the couch.

You're cooking for all the kids, but the little ones come first. The little ones are 1-6, the youth is 7-10, then the older ones are 11-17. Why do the little ones wake up earlier? You're not sure.

Since there isn’t anything to watch except Smiling Critter videos. You decide to watch that. While it was playing, you kind of— zoned out..

‘Why don’t I have hands instead of hooves’?

Then Dogday and Catnap came out of nowhere.

“Sheepy”!

“...”

Dogday jumped on you while Catnap crawled on the couch and sat next to you.

“What’cha doin?!” Dogday asked, he was always so interested in what you do in your everyday life. It’s just a routine, sometimes it doesn’t always stick to that but it’s okay.

“Waiting for the pancakes to cook—” While you were speaking, apparently PickyPiggy woke up and wanted to check on the cooking.

“Oh that’s great! Your pancakes are amazing! As always!” Dogday always compliments you on your cooking.

“What’s the ingredients for em? Again..?” And for some reason he couldn’t remember the ingredients every single time you told him. But you don’t mind.

(This is a real recipe by the way you can actually make this, it’s how I make pancakes!) While making eye contact with Picky, you were stating the ingredients.

“So I first use 1 cup of pancake flour”(You can use any, I think, I’m not sure since I’ve been using the same one every time I make pancakes)

“Then a ⅔ cup of water(If the flour looks like it needs more water you can do a full cup!)” You were hand motioning to Picky to flip over the pancakes since they should be done by now. She did it so you don’t have to worry too much, now.

She’s taking care of the pancakes now that you’re explaining the ingredients to a very interested puppy, and a very much listening kitty.

“Then three slices of butter, after getting the pieces I put it in the microwave, for 30 seconds or 1 minute, depending on how big the slices were”

“And to add some yummy flavor to it I use cinnamon, as much as you want really, also if you want to make it really sweet, you can use milk”!

“After putting the ingredients together, you mix 'em up! And now you pour the batter on the griddle, as much as you want”.

“Also if it’s too dry you could add more liquids(any of them, the melted butter, the water, the milk) or if it’s too liquidy you could add more flour”.

“... Wow! Sheepy you’re so cool when it comes to cooking and stuff!” The puppy was wagging his tail at how amazing you were with your knowledge about making food.

Then he gave you a big hug, he was on your left side so you put your left arm around his back.

“Thanks—”

Then Catnap rubbed his head against yours while purring.

Even if Picky is still in the area, she’s too sleepy to process Catnap’s affection.

You didn’t want to sleep here on the couch so you suggested to the polar opposites that, “We should move to our critter bedroom or something”.

While you three were walking to the critter room, remember how I said that some kids were early birds? Yeah, and someee of those kids were out of their bedrooms. So you and Catnap had to deal with having them go back into their rooms, since Dogday isn’t too good at that stuff.

He sometimes gets.. Manipulated by the kids.. They reason with him and tell him that it’s okay to stay out of the rooms. Then he goes, “Okay!” It’s not annoying, but it is annoying that the kids were taking advantage of Dogday’s kindness.

After that frenzy, you guys were actually heading back to the critters’ room.

Luckily, the workers thankfully had sympathy for the critters so you all actually have a place to rest. Even if you don’t need to sleep.

All the critters, except Picky, were playing around in the room. Then your trio came in and walked in on a party. Like a teenage birthday party, it was actually crazy. And somehow Craftycorn was drawing during all of this??

Catnap, Dogday and you were going towards your bed, just sitting on it, watching the madness. There was so much laughing, the room could be mistaken for a bunch of 3 year olds.

Then, KickinChicken threw a pillow and it hit Catnap’s face..

The room went silent, though, Craftycorn was still drawing.

“Oh! Sorry Catnap! I’ll try not to hit you again”!

He slowly turned his head towards the chicken, looking scary as ever.

But then you scratched the underside of his chin with your wrist(since you’re a sheep and have wool) or if your critter actually has hands then you scratched under his chin with your hand.

“Sorry about him, continue.” And then the playing started again.

And yes, Catnap started purring.

[bowelflies]

collection of stick insect eggs, photo by Levon Biss