Meet Australia’s Mysterious New Giant Stick Insect: As Long as a Ruler and Heavier Than You’d Expect!
James Cook University researcher Angus Emmott and wildlife expert Ross Coupland detailed the discovery in a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Zootaxa.
‘Acrophylla Alta,’ Australia’s Heaviest Insect
Even among Australia’s massive insects, Acrophylla alta is a behemoth — and the reason for this, researchers say, is likely its environment.
In a statement from James Cook University, Emmott explained, “It’s a cool, wet environment where they live. Their body mass likely helps them survive the colder conditions, and that’s why they’ve developed into this large insect over millions of years.”
Notably, Acrophylla alta is not the biggest stick insect in Australia in terms of length, which only makes its denseness more remarkable.
As Emmott said, “There are longer stick insects out there, but they’re fairly light bodied. From what we know to date, this is Australia’s heaviest insect.”
Those environmental conditions also helped to hide the insect from scientists’ eyes until now.
“It’s restricted to a small area of high-altitude rainforest, and it lives high in the canopy,” Emmott said. “So, unless you get a cyclone or a bird bringing one down, very few people get to see them.”
To determine if this truly was a new species, Emmott and Coupland journeyed to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in Queensland to find a specimen for themselves. They had seen a photograph of the insect and immediately suspected it was an unidentified species, but to verify this, they needed proof.
After multiple nights of searching, they located a female stick insect high in a tree and captured it. They fed it and kept it safe until it laid eggs, which allowed them to confirm that they were, in fact, dealing with a new species.
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