Master of Disguise

What is that branch doing? Why is it walking? Yeah, its a stick bug. Stick bugs to me are one of the most fascinating insects and surely one of the greatest masters of disguise when it comes to blending into their natural habitat. However, to be a true master of disguise it must come with a life worth of experience and for stick bugs it does just that. Since birth, stick bugs have used camouflage to their advantage. It first starts when the adult female stick bug lays roughly 100- 1500 eggs, depending on the species, that are camouflaged to look like seeds from a plant. This form of camouflage prevents seeds from being eaten, but it is also surrounded with a substance that ants feed on. As a result, the ants take the eggs back to their nest, without ever affecting the embryo, and the stick bugs safely hatch in the ant nest used as protection from predators.

                                                        
                                                                   Stick bug eggs 

Once hatched, the stick bugs are now nymphs where they grow by molting and they use autotomy (shedding off limbs and grow back with a new molt) to escape from predators. They already look similar to what they will as adults. Nymphs molt roughly four to eight times over a three month period before becoming an adult where they lose their ability of autotomy forever.

                                                         
                                                                 Stick bug nymph

In the adult stage, the males and females mate to restart the process all over again. Females are bigger than the males due to their larger abdomens used to lay eggs and males actually contain wings in order to help them find a mate. Also, in the adult stage these insects are clearly clever when it comes to disguising in their surrounding. If the camouflage of looking like a stick in a tree isn't enough to avoid predators, stick bugs have also been found to play dead while using their spiny legs as weapons and emitting bad smells. They use their camouflage to their advantage because they are prey to many tree-living animals such as birds and rodents, but even they have a hard time finding these masters of disguise in the insect world.

                                     
                                                              Adult Stick bug 

Information found from:
http://a-z-animals.com/animals/stick-insect/
http://animals.pawnation.com/life-cycle-walking-stick-bug-6523.html

Images found from:
http://www.keepinginsects.com/stick-insect/breeding/
http://mplonsky.deviantart.com/art/Baby-Stick-Bug-203347184
http://www.westfield.ma.edu/personalpages/draker/edcom/final/webprojects/sp09/bugslife/SlimQuestion.html