Talk:Extatosoma tiaratum
Fascinating article. Well doner.
I agree, fascinating. But they're just about the ugliest creatures I've ever seen.
Thanks for the article - its very amusing, comical and helpful.
We are the owners of a female Extatosoma tiaratum (here in South Australia, we call them 'spiny leaf stick insects').
We did have a male also and both were bought as adults and were already quite large. However we have never observed a single moult from either and the male died within a few months of coming home.
There were maybe a dozen or so eggs (fertilized) laid in that time and those are now about 3-5 months old and probably nearing hatching. The remainder of the eggs (around 100 more) have been laid since and at a much, much faster rate since the male died.
To put names to them, our female is called 'Slinky.' She is now 13cm/just over 5inches long and seems very healthy and active and the male (rest his soul) was called 'Spindle' - feel free to adopt these names to honour the dead and near-dead.
Our female is slowing down now and becoming elderly, so tomorrow we're going to give her one last day out in the park.
The reason we stumbled upon your article tonight is due to the fact that we were searching far and wide for any info to explain the strange behavior slinky displayed this evening.
Before I describe the behavior, I'll describe her environment and the way she is treated almost every night:
- When Spindle was alive and we knew nothing about this species, we built a plastic aquarium with the following inside (after he died we removed the aquarium): We have a plastic planter-pot tray (60cm/2ft in length and about 12mm/quarter inch deep) on which she lives alone on our kitchen bench where she is completely exposed to our human traffic, sounds, smells of cooking, temperature variations and house plants (which she never, ever touches as she seems to know they're no good for her). The funny thing about this living arrangement is that in the early days after Spindle died, she seemed to come looking for my wife and I. If we had gone outside, we were quite startled to find that she would make her way quite quickly and directly to the door she had seen us leave through. In the same way, if we were in the office (about 3m/10ft from her home), she would make her way along the wall until she could see us and stop when she was level with us. She seems to recognize us very obviously and even has come to enjoy being hand-fed a drink of water from a spray bottle!
- In her tray we have washed sand with broken-down coir spread on top (for those who don't know, 'coir' is the fibrous material from the outside of a coconut and is very often mixed into potting mix for its moisture retaining capabilities and in the bottoms of hanging baskets for the same reason and as a barrier layer to help the soil to remain in the pot).
- As can be seen in the attached image, we have a cracked glass vase for her fresh leaves and water inside the vase to keep the leaves fresh longer and also for the purpose of providing a decent weight to keep it upright when she hangs from leaves or moves around the vase quite fast (she has never tipped it over). The advantage of the cracked glass is that it has many fine ridges and burrs - perfect for slinky to hold onto and she never slips as she grips these ridges easily.
Slinky's home
- Generally the leaves we feed her are rose leaves and from varying species of rose. Her colour does change quite significantly when we give her young, red rose leaves and she seems to REALLY prefer young leaves and eats flat out when we give them to her. Slinky's colour becomes quite dark and a usually a tinge of red/maroon when she eats these leaves, and she later returns to her normal yellowish colour, that sometimes has a tinge of green or brown, even within hours of her having stopped eating. The reason for the colour change is the colour of the of the chlorophyll in the leaves.
- Every site describing the egg-laying behavior of Slinkys (as we like to call the females of this species) refers to the way in which females flick their eggs. Slinky has only ever dropped her eggs in the same way she drops her poos, except once last week. She will even allow us to catch her eggs with our hands, when we notice them coming. This does not bother her and she never appears to feel threatened. We move her eggs to one end of her tray and half bury them in the coir and wet them with the spray bottle once a day, also wetting the coir to provide lasting humidity. At night time, we take slinky, her vase and leaves to our office desk and place her and her mobile home under our fluro desk light. She seems to really enjoy this as she tilts her head right back and will often extend her front legs out toward the light (she seems to be basking/sun-baking and will stay in this position for up to 15-20 hours). She also often likes to climb off her leaves and onto the light itself (which has a glass cover) and she really seems to enjoy the very low heat coming from it. The one time she flicked an egg was last week when my wife picked her vase up to bring her to the office while we worked (as nearly every other night of the week) and Slinky must have been ready to drop an egg and became startled and flicked her egg very, very fast and it hit the side of a plastic container with a very sharp and hard ping. Since then she has laid about half a dozen more eggs in her usual manner of just dropping them.
- However, tonight she displayed very odd behavior. As she was being brought into the office, she began trying to grab her own tail with her hind legs and when she managed to do so, she started to really violently pull or rip at her tail's skin/shell and swayed in a very jerky or aggressive manner. We have never seen this type of behavior before and we are home a lot and watch her constantly as she in in a highly visible spot in the house. Has anyone reading this blog ever observed this kind of behavior in this species? We can find no reference to it anywhere.
- Here's the bit all you Extatosoma tiaratum enthusiasts and general readers will love: Slinky has a potty! I wouldn't say she is potty-trained as such but a good 80% of her poos land in her potty (which is an upside-down jar lid placed under her bum) because she seems so content to stay in one position most of the time - as long as she gets enough social time with us each day. Sometimes I take her into the front yard and sit with her on the lawn. At first she stays still and curls her tail because she's in long grass and is probably wary of predators in this type of environment. Soon, she relaxes and begins to turn her head a lot, looking around and inspecting individual blades of grass, lowering her tail, swaying very fast and rhythmically. The longer I have her out in the natural sunlight, the faster she begins to move. I'm now careful when taking her outside as I've noticed that predatorial birds start to land in the trees nearby and tilt their heads, just watching and waiting for an opportunity to feed. For this reason, I would suggest not allowing your Extatosoma tiaratum to wander more than about 60cm/2ft from you (about arm's length) to be ready to protect her. Another interesting thing she does is to shake/vibrate very, very fast, shaking the grass around her too, whenever she encounters an ant or if an ant climbs onto her body. Of course I remove any ants immediately though. If we neglect to include her in watching the TV or our weekend DVD with the kids, if she doesn't get time with mummy and daddy in the office at night or if she doesn't get to climb on us enough, she then decides to wander throughout the house, exploring, at night time! Generally she will go for the back door or our office, as these are the 2 locations she seems to think she'll find us in and they're within her territory/area she is familiar with. She doesn't know of the room/bedroom we go to at night. As I said earlier, she REALLY and OBVIOUSLY recognizes us because as we approach her she begins to sway very quickly and with a kind of pulsating beat or rhythm, extending and waving her front legs, bending toward us as if telling us she wants a hug. One of us will then place a hand above her and within reach of her front legs and she will then climb up onto our hands and only lets go of the leaves with her back legs once she has tested her footing and decided she is safe to climb. She refuses to climb in a southern direction (won't climb down) and will only ever climb up. When I hold her, she climbs up my arm to my neck and around to my face and will stand up and tickle my bottom lip with her front foot pads and claws but seems to know to not go any further and will stay there for as long as I allow it.
- Another thing she seems to always do (and I don't know if this is just typical behavior) is to put her hair back when she's eating, lol. To explain, I'm referring to her antennae. Whenever she gets to eating, she turns them backwards and they resemble two little pony-tails, adding to her cuteness and personality. Does anyone else notice this with their pet?
- As far as her water intake, we spray/mist her skin 1-2 times per day. Almost every time we do this she begins to sway and eat, putting her hair back and opening her mandibles wide to catch large droplets of water. Once she has a large droplet on her face, cradled in her four mandibles, we can quite clearly see the water sinking into her mouth with pulses, as though she's gulping. I might add that Slinky has so much personality and seems so alert and smart, whilst Spindle was rather dumb and just an insect, displaying none of this behavior and seemed to hate our intrusion, moving aggressively and even thought he was on the set of Prison Break, flying away twice and landing with his fists up and ready to go 3 rounds. His acting career was cut short because he was told his face was perfect for radio - perhaps he died from disappointment...?
We're now expecting at least the fertilized eggs to begin hatching soon and have bought a special container in which to place the eggs for humidity and to stop the little tackers from running away. We'll keep this blog updated to let you all know what happens next. Slinky's here with us now and basking under our desk light. I'm about to get some new leaves from the backyard and then I'll take a photo and attach it.
Thanks for the fascinating response! It's good to know I'm not the only one who can see the personality in these insects.
I have never seen the behaviour you described. I know that they will sometimes raise their back legs if they perceive a threat - is it possible her legs just got stuck? I suppose that's pretty unlikely! It's nice that Slinky follows you around the house...I'd allow my insects to be free-ranging, but there's too much clutter around the place for them to get stuck behind or crushed under.
There's a useful site where you can email an expert on stick insect-related things - Ask Professor Phasmid. When I emailed her a while ago, I received a response within 24 hours. It may prove to be helpful for you.
If you have a worrying surplus of eggs, then there are places that will accept them as donations. The Nature Education Centre in Norwood (inside the primary school) has always gladly taken them off my hands (I don't think I could handle hundreds of hatchlings running around the place). The Nature Education Centre loans various critters (amongst other things) to schools for educational purposes. CSIROSEC, the Museum or even pet stores may be interested in them.
