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www.mdavid.com.au |
Titan Stick InsectNo 3D trickery, jokes or special effects here — this is for real. I found this remarkable critter, a mature female Titan Stick Insect (Acrophylla titan), in Dee Why (suburban Sydney, Australia) one summer night. These gentle and beautiful animals are leaf eaters. And, no they are NOT dangerous. |
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Close-up view of the stick insect's head (left) |
Its length, from the tip of the abdomen to the end of its front legs was an astonishing 42cm (16.5 inches). Length from its head to the end of its abdomen would have been approximately 25cm (almost 10 inches) To give you a better idea of how big that is, here's how it would look beside some familiar objects - a CD, an Australian one-dollar coin, and a pencil. |
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Of course I took a lot of photos of it. I'm also very grateful to the awesome Shane Lennard from the Hunter Valley, for letting me use some of his superb titan photos.
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So they don't eat people or dogs. Then what do they eat?Their food plants include eucalyptus (gum trees), babyberry, bramble, Photinia, and cypress pine. Where you might find themTitans live along the east coast of Australia. I've drawn red dots on a map to show the locations of people who've contacted me after finding one, with most of the dots ending up near Sydney/Central Coast and Brisbane/Sunshine Coast. Of course, there are a lot of people living in those areas so that could explain the concentrations of sightings. Please note that this map is nothing like a comprehensive map of their range and should not be interpreted as one. Also, I can't verify the accuracy of identifications in all of these sightings. It's been interesting hearing from people who claim to have found titans and sure enough, their locations lie within the range where the literature says they should be. I've heard from folks in Victoria too, who claim to have found some. |
Not a Titan: A brief diversion looking at another type of stick insect
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Not a Titan: Although the head of this stick insect, shown in the three photos above, looks very similar to the Titan, it is not one. Instead it is possibly a Ctenopmorpha marginipennis or a Ctenopmorpha chronus. And the wings (shown at left) are different colours to Titan wings. Also, being only 30 cm long (body plus extended front legs) they were all much smaller than the size mature female Titans can reach. This was one of a large group living on a small tree in suburban Sydney and it was a real treat to see so many impressive stick insects in one place. Thanks Chris for the tip about their location! Thanks also to the Australian Museum |
A bit more information about TitansTitans normally hang around among the high branches but occasionally an injured one is found on the ground near one of their food trees. The males don't grow as big as the females and they also have fully-developed wings. Therefore the males are good fliers. It's possible that these insects, although not the heaviest insects in the world, are the longest insects in the world. (You can only feel grateful that fire ants don't grow this big) Female titans lay a lot of eggs, which they flick away from themselves onto the ground. This scatters the eggs so the young will have a chance of finding another tree. It's not known if these insects are endangered because their camouflage is so good - they really do look like a thin branch - that it's hard to know if there are a lot of them in the wild or not.
Female Titan Stick Insect (above) An unexpected findI found the stick insect shown below, possibly a female Titan, on a wall in a busy indoor shopping centre in Sydney's eastern suburbs, at least a hundred metres from the nearest tree. Despite it clinging to a bare wall with a constant stream of people walking past, no one appeared to notice it until I picked it up. It just goes to show it's worth keeping your eyes open for critters everywhere. As big as this one is, it's nowhere near the maximum size of a female Titan.
Other stick insects in AustraliaThere are more than a hundred species of stick insects in Australia. Identifying them isn't easy — unless of course they're as long as your arm, which certainly narrows the options down.
The stick insect shown above looks like a Titan. But once again, I don't believe it is one. Instead, I think it's more likely to be a Strong Stick Insect (Anchiale briareus). This one's length (including the oustretched front legs) was about 26 cm. It was photographed in northern Queensland, where Strong Stick Insects are fairly common.
Close-up shot of the head of the stick insect shown above. So then, is the titan the longest insect in the world?No, it's not. I've now learned that some Australian stick insects get even bigger, reaching lengths of more than half a metre (if you include the oustretched legs). Paul Brock, one of the authors of this field guide, told me about one species, Ctenomorpha gargantua, reaching approximately 615 mm (once again, that's if you include the outstretched legs). Next time you're holding a tape measure just see for yourself how big that is. The book covers all the stick and leaf insects currently known in Australia. |
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