Comments on: The World’s Longest

By: cryptidsrus

cryptidsrus — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:40:52 +0000

Fascinating.
Good new name:
“Stick-in-the-mud.”

By: sausage1

sausage1 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:22:09 +0000

Fetch, Rover! Fetch, boy! Fetch the … oh, shoot!

By: youcantryreachingme

youcantryreachingme — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:21:08 +0000

I’ve seen one that would go close – in the New England area of New South Wales, Australia… along with the giant cicadas I’m still trying to track down, and some very very aggressive wolf spiders…

By: MattBille

MattBille — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:39:11 +0000

It’s interesting that insect physiology allows for a creature this lengthy. I’m thinking not so much of the inefficient system insects use to circulate oxygen (with a thin body like this, it should work fine) but of the limits of an exoskeleton when you stretch it out to this degree (picture taking a very thin soda straw and seeing how long it can get and still hold up as you press the “foot” end down for locomotion). I am wondering if this is about as long as an insect can get.

By: UCTZoology

UCTZoology — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:31:12 +0000

” …adding to the 3,000 known species of the bug mainly found …”

indeed not a bug, I generally do not mind others using it as a common word to refer to all insects (or spiders or other creepy crawleys) but I think when used in an article about insects it should be reserved for referring to the hemiterans. a stick insect is not a hermipteran it is in a different order, phasmatodea, and therefore not a bug.

Im just nitpicking as per usual loren, sorry.

By: DWA

DWA — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:26:53 +0000

I remember a trailless ridge in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park that a friend and I called Walkingstick Ridge for the numbers of them we found.

But none of them was that big. HUGE bear pies. But no megasticks.

Roast them and you have the Bornean Footlong!

By: RocKiteman

RocKiteman — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:04:56 +0000

Regarding the photograph of the woman at the top of the page, maybe she just believes in the old adage, ‘walk softly and carry a big stick {insect}’….

;~)°

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:44:46 +0000

I happen to be a biology teacher and have a love for all animals great and small. I appreciate nature in all of its various forms and find beauty in even spiders, bats, and snakes. But for some reason I am completely and irrationally terrified by stick insects. I remember finding one perched upon me when I woke up one morning in a tent in South east Asia and I screamed like a little girl. And that wasn’t even a particularly big one. So much for a rational scientific mind.

Thanks for the nightmares tonight.