Lord Howe Island stick insect

I talked to a friend tonight at goth night about using bones for odd purposes. He was telling me about a corset he had made with a trim made out of little bones. He said he had to eat a lot of chickens to get them all. I've had pretty good luck with owl pellets myself for sculpture stuff.

Art

Goal for the week 16.5 hrs

Today

 work on the sphinx

Animal

Photo by Peter Halasz

The Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) is probably the world's most endangered insect. They had once been abundant on Lord Howe island near Australia but were thought to have been completely wiped out by black rats in the 1930's. In 2001 about 30 of them were discovered on a tiny isolated treeless sea stack called Ball's Pyramid living under a Melaleuca shrub. Four of them were removed two were taken to the Melbourne zoo and two given to a private breeder in Sydney. There are now about 15 times the wild population living in captivity and there are plans to reintroduce them to Lord Howe island after the rats have been removed.  Current predictions are that this will happen around 2011. 

A picture of one that is less dead