Name this Insect
(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)
No doubt some BB reader can name this far-fetched creature, which I found pinned to some styrofoam in a display case at the Butterfly Museum in Boca Raton, Florida. Picture yourself camping somewhere in the wilderness and seeing one of these six-inch weirdos zooming into your tent. I have to wonder why such a thing should evolve the way it did, especially with that weird extra pair of wings, like the canard on one of Burt Rutan’s composite airplanes.
The museum is a fun place to visit, allowing you to walk through giant cages full of freshly hatched butterflies. Watching people trying to photograph them is highly entertaining, since butterflies move chaotically while flying and then, as soon as they land, most of them close their wings.
It was much easier to take pictures of the insects that were dead.
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He looks like a "Douglas" to me. Maybe "Todd."
It's one of the fairies from "Pan's Labyrinth"
It's the doctor who successfully removed the woman's kidney through her vagina!
a variety of "stick insect"
I agree with Stefan. That or possibly "Gus."
Looks like an average Praying Mantis to me. This one has been str8ened out when PMs rarely are.
I guess the head looks noticably different, though.
Australian walking stick
it's a Train Spotter
http://www.schools.ash.org.au/murrumba/inspace/images/goliath.jpg
You saw this pinned to some styrofoam case at a museum... Hmm... Did you think to read the label which was no doubt adjacent to the specimen?
This is a specimen from Order Phasmida, the stick and leaf insects. As to what species? I have no idea...
I'm going with "Goliath Stick Insect" or a close relative.
Gawd, what an amazing creature. It looks like an insect mash-up, two (at least) different insects super glued together! Definitely *looks* like some variety of stick insect.
That thing :
Dragonfly ::
Mosquito-eater :
Mosquito
--I meant, as far as its looks. Idk whether or not it actually eats dragonflies, but it has the same sort of resemblance, at least to my mind's eye.
Actually, that's not an extra pair of wings -insects have four wings each.
Some species have vestigal pairs (flies for example) or have one pair that is converted into a protective outer covering (beetles), or only have certain members with wings (ants)... but two pairs of wings is the defeault.
we call them 'walking sticks', and the wings are for gliding, as they are usually found up in trees.
Hi guys! I have to agree with Brainspore here, this looks exactly like the Golaith Stick Insect I had the pleasure of interacting with just this week. I have photos here : http://deography.com/?photo=579
and a video of this amazing creature here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVu30W1nHBE&fmt=18
It is not actually the largest insect in the world, but if you judge an insect by it's length its rivaled only by some other stick insects from Borneo.
Goliath Stick Insect - Eurycnemma goliath
I forgot to mention, my photos and video show a specimen in nymph or pre-adult stage. Clearly the boing boing image is a full adult.
Yes,as others have said, its a Phasmid (Phasmatodea; the stick insects and relatives). As someone commented insects do have 4 wings normally, its primarily just the flies that have modified one pair into small balance organs (halteres) that you generally don't notice. But some other insects, including these, modify the front set to be wing cases not typical wings. Think of beetles, they have really hard tough cases over their wings, grasshoppers often have softer cases (but still smaller and harder than the real flight wings), and other insects too. This guy's front wings are small (they don't need to expand to catch the air) and are tougher than the hind wings and will act as a protective case when the hind wings are folded away. And in response to somebody above, many stick insects can fly very well (but don't worry Charles they rarely "zoom" anywhere and mostly like to pretend to be sticks). Its a really cool one though, beautiful.
I'd rather not, because that would involve picturing myself going absolutely nuts somewhere in the wilderness inside my tent.
It's hard to judge the scale of this beastie, but we have a very similar looking, pretty huge (about 6") stick insect in a glass case at home.
It's on my Mum's living room wall.
I can't remember what the little display card says, though. Sorry.
I don't know a taxonomic name, but we refer to them as stick bugs. They are fairly common in the wilderness in Florida, and can very often be found on asphalt, warming up during mating season.
We Have these in far-north Australia. Could be any of: a Titan Stick Insect (Acrophylla titan) or Giant Walking Stick (Acrophylla wuelfingi) or a Goliath as noted earlier. I found one once in the Kimberley region of WA which was just over 30cm in length. Very cool animals who can be quite sociable if you don't freak em out too much. And unlike some creatures in this crazy country they won't kill you with some tailored neurotoxin at a single bite.
I think that might've been a dig at the theory of evolution. But maybe not, I'm just too accustomed to this dude's posts being a little nuts.
Wow, really beautiful. So alien looking.
I'd say the second pair of wings are vestigial, as some are saying above, although I could see them being helpful as stabilizers or something. Indeed, perhaps insects like this will be the design inspiration for a new breed of ornithopters.
When is there going to be a insectpunk fad to replace steampunk?
Thanks for posting this.
Where is Grissom when you need him?!
Allow me to point you to one of my favorite special-purpose websites:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/
which will often helpfully point you to the right answer damn quickly, with all kinds of good pictures and descriptions.
The Ugly Overload website often features some mind-blowing high quality pictures of mantids and stick insects, if you want your mind blown even further!
I would absolutely hate to have one of these weirdos zooming anywhere near me. There would be screaming and ineffective flailing. Anyone remember the Expedia.com commercial with the mosquito nets? Icky creepy bugs!
I cant get too pedantic, but it's definitely a stick insect of some variety. I absolutely love insects ... grew up in the Australian bush almost my whole life. And theres no need to worry about this bug zooming towards you - they prefer just pretending to be a stick on a tree ... most of the time lol.
Butterfly World is in Coconut Creek, not Boca.
www.butterflyworld.com
Are you sure it's not a humbug?
http://www.forumhub.com/stories/21862.09.16.37.html
Yep, it's a variety of stick insect. They're absolutely harmless, although if you try to pick one up it will curl its tail up at you like a scorpion - an empty threat.
I live down south, and they're everywhere in the spring.
Hey, there's Waldo!
praying mantis, not a stick insect.
The last one of those that I saw was under the fender of an abandoned Honda Dream in a woods. We wanted to remove the bike but I hated to disturb the amazing stick insect.
pix around here somewhere...
I'm almost positive that this photo is from Butterfly World which is in Coconut Creek, Florida (http://www.butterflyworld.com), which is close to Boca Raton, but is not Boca Raton.
I don't mean to be picky, but without them you would have no article and I'm sure they could use the exposure.
All flying insects have 2 sets of wings. However, in some cases, they've been modified. Here the first pair seems to be more of a protective covering like the elytra (shell) of a beetle.
Favorite joke:
A grasshopper walks into a bar.
Bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you."
Grasshopper says, "You have a drink named Steve?"
Yep, definitely one of the fairies in Pan's Labyrinth. Not that it helps with an ID...
If that badass bug eats mosquitos, we'll grant it citizenship here in Minnesota.
Creepanoid
Dragon stick?
it looks like a walking stick insect
Its CGI of the imaginary insect from Pan's Labyrinth.
In Western New York, we called them walking sticks, and the second set of wings is not unusual among insects.
Agreed that it's the Goliath stick insect.
Looks like goliath stick insect is the winner
http://agspsrv34.agric.wa.gov.au/ento/images/E_goliath.jpg
for scale:
http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/bishop/photos/CSIRO25Oct.jpg
and gross-out factor:
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_03/janiceslebREX2111a_468x289.jpg
Thanks, google image search.
Now that all you clever folk have verified that it is the Goliath Stick insect, is it keepable as a pet?
I want one!
I dunno, are they endangered?
Thank you Theodosia, I was going to add that link as well as this one where I submit photos:
http://bugguide.net/
I personally like my insects and critters alive.
His name is Jerry. I had a few drinks with him and a couple of crazy palmetto bugs when I was in Boca last year.
That's the Zissou fly, isn't it?
I caught one in Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona -- it was pretty big. I know the tropical ones are enormous as in the link in comments above.
@tenn Make sure to spay or neuter your Goliath Insects.
If you watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom again (don't..) you'll see that all those varied insects from the underground passageway that you remember?
Crickets. Crickets, and these things. Whatever it is, it's friendly.
I've kept large walking sticks as pets- they are very sweet, just eating blackberry leaves all day and dropping eggs and craps. We froze the eggs lest we breed an army of females. Long after they died of old age, I actually found a small one on a wall in SF and kept it for a few years. It seemed unhappy out there on the mean streets. Sometimes stores sell them, but I think they are illegal in CA because of fears of crop damage. But if they wiped out Himalayan blackberry the state would be none the worse, me say.
Can't we also say that this specimen, specifically, is a male Goliath? Since it has wings?
"Name this Insect"
Um, yeah, that insects name is Chuy Francisco Marquin Mario Merceda, but he says you can call him Bob.
pink winged stick, sipyloidea sipylus
i like the insect you had just discover and i think you sould call it "stick wing".