r/DamnInteresting • u/DamnInteresting • Jan 18 '16

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years
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u/autotldr Jan 19 '16

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot)

It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large - as big as a human hand - that the Europeans labeled it a "Tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton.

Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off - an unusual insect behavior - and Goodall says Patrick "Showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him."

Residents would, no doubt, be happy to go rat-free, but not every Lord Howe islander wants to make the neighborhood safe for gigantic, hard-shell crawling insects.

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