One event happened to shoot my heart-rate up during my happy and lazy Saturday evening - this little creature!! This is the best photo I could get so far.This animal is a leaf insect from family Phylliidae. Like many insects, leaf insects reproduce parthenogenetically - without males. Males do exist and look differently from females, but are very rare.
I was lucky to get three leaf insects as very early Christmas presents last year (pictured on the phots below). Two out of three reached maturity and only one survived until August 2013, when she laid 25 black eggs that resemble plant seeds. To this little insect, it took six months to hatch. During these six months, the eggs have gone dry, mould has grown on them, they were placed into a new container several times and not to mention had to survive much lower temperatres than advised when the heating in my room didn't work for about a week - so definitely not a perfect care and yet - at least one of them made it through :) The young ones are reddish-brown, but they change colour to green within the first few weeks of their life.
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| Can you see it? : ) |
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| The mother of my current leaf insect |
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| Young leaf insect taking a walk on my keyboard |
Very cool looking. My sister had a pet stick bug once.
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