Birth

[BT]

Lord Howe Island Stick Insect hatching


Here's the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.

On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a "tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.

Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.

Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn't a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.

There was a rumor, though.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I suppose that there are other rat-free islands off Australia where they could settle a colony of these bugs.

An interesting tale. That is what I like most about NPR: they report stories that no one else will.

[BSB]

I love to here about species, subspecies, coming back from near extinction. My biggest disappointment was a twice failed attempt to bring back the woodland Caribou to northern Maine. Of interest to me now is the eastern mountain lion. The official view is that it's extinct but several cougar sittings in western Mass, and Conn., have been reported. I suspect that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is correct in assuming any cougars around here are escaped, or set free, pets.  Of course a resurgence of the mountain population would be a double edged sword. Great for wildlife fans like me, but a very dangerous predator.


http://gazettenet.com/2011/03/03/eastern-mountain-lion-officially-extinct-lives-lore?SESS6bcb9dd6a54ef777fc19404a9210875a=gnews

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am more an advocate of stick insects than cougars being released in the wild. No one gets eaten by a stick insect.

[kimba1]

repopulation programs are a hit or miss thing. I remember in colorado they put a couple of bobcats  in that area and automaticly they started running toward thier point of origin not eating the whole way and simply died. People forget alot animals are not vey adaptable and can`t be transplanted easily.

just capturing an animal can life threatening.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Still, repopulating stick insects should not be too difficult. Australia has lots of offshore islands, many too small to be populated by people.