Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

It feels as though I have only just got these critters, but the first spiny leaf insect has matured. It's hardly surprising. Since they arrived, these stick insects have decimated the raspberry plants that I grow in my garden. I am constantly clipping fresh leaves to put into their enclosure, and they have been molting quite often. The most recent molt for this one has resulted in a mature male stick insect. The easiest way to tell that it is mature is the presence of wings, as nymphs generally don't have wings, and a subadult insect can have at the most wing nubs. So this insect suddenly emerging from his molt with wings tells me he is mature. The presence of full length, fully functional wings tells me that this is a male. Female stick insects tend to be much larger than males, and only have vestigial wings that can't carry their bulky weight. This guy is long and skinny, indicating a male. Obviously, he is quite a bit larger than I was anticipating - most of the s...

Tyson gave me a surprise this evening. Please note that I still don't know what sex Tyson is - I originally suspected female, but now I'm not sure. For the purposes of this post I will refer to Tyson as a "he", as his name is masculine. I may update his gender in later posts. Tyson is one of my two smaller mantises - a Yunnan flower mantis. He's just over an inch long, with an olive green and white body, and lovely purple eyes. I always knew that he was going to be smaller than Catchy, but I have to confess, I thought he'd get bigger than he has done. I have been waiting on a delivery of fruit flies for my smaller critters and they finally arrived today, so I was going from tank to tank, spritzing the smaller cages and then dropping some fruit flies in for them. I don't have many critters that still need fruitflies - the two smaller mantises, Loki my dwarf tarantula sling, and Pratt my curly hair sling. The two slings are about a centimeter across, ...