The tree lobster insect is a species of stick bug which was thought to have gone extinct around 1918 after black...

The tree lobster insect is a species of stick bug which was thought to have gone extinct around 1918 after black rats were introduced to the island on which they lived. After the last sighting occurred around 1920, the species was thought to have been wiped out.

In 2001, two Australian scientists that had been researching Ball’s Pyramid - a large sea stack off the coast of Australia that reaches higher than the Empire State Building - miraculously discovered twenty-four of the insects living atop the rock. On all sides, the rock face drops off vertically, making it nearly impossible for anything to survive - yet somehow, the insects did. The colony was found living around the only plant on the island, a shrub that had also somehow managed to survive despite the nearly inhospitable conditions.

Nobody knows how they got there in the first place because, astonishingly, tree lobster insects are incapable of flight. 

After their brush with death, four members of the species were flown to Australia, where they are being bred and have plans to be reintroduced to the island chains that they once lived on. Currently there are roughly 700 individuals and over 11,000 eggs being incubated in the Melbourne Zoo.

Article:
http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years

#biodiversity   #treelobsterinsect   #coolinsects