Lord Howe Island Stick Insect
Declared extinct for 80 years. The entire surviving wild population — 24 individuals — was living under one bush on a sheer volcanic spire in the ocean
No confirmed photograph exists
Location
Ball's Pyramid, Tasman Sea, Australia
Overview
The Lord Howe Island stick insect — nicknamed the 'tree lobster' for its size, glossy black body, and lobster-like legs — was declared extinct after black rats arrived via a grounded supply ship in 1918 and ate the island population to zero within two years. For eight decades, it existed only in museum drawers. In 2001, a team of climbers on Ball's Pyramid — a 562-metre volcanic spire 23km from Lord Howe Island, with no soil, no fresh water, and barely any vegetation — found fresh droppings under a single Melaleuca tea tree. That night, by torchlight, they found 24 individuals. It was the entire surviving wild population of the species.
Why haven't we found it?
How the stick insects crossed 23 kilometres of open ocean to Ball's Pyramid is unknown. The rock has no permanent water source and almost no plant matter. The 24 animals were almost certainly all that remained in the world, and they were living at 100 metres of altitude on a vertical basalt face in conditions so marginal that a single bad season could have ended the species before anyone found them.
How it was found
- 1
Melbourne Zoo took two breeding pairs from Ball's Pyramid and established a captive colony that eventually produced over 13,000 individuals — one of the most successful insect captive breeding programs ever conducted.
- 2
A rat eradication program on Lord Howe Island was completed in 2019, removing the threat that caused the original extinction. Reintroduction of captive-bred tree lobsters to the island began in 2022.
- 3
The Melaleuca tea tree the animals were sheltering under on Ball's Pyramid is now monitored. Researchers return periodically to check on the remaining wild population.
Things worth knowing
- 1
Tree lobsters can reach 15cm in length and are among the largest insects in the world. They are completely flightless. Females reproduce parthenogenetically — they can produce offspring without males — which likely explains how a tiny founding population survived on Ball's Pyramid.
- 2
The eggs take 9 months to hatch and look exactly like small green seeds, so well-camouflaged that early researchers initially mistook them for plant matter.
- 3
The original Lord Howe Island extinction took less than two years after the ship SS Makambo ran aground in 1918. Rats were ashore for only nine days before being removed from the vessel — long enough.
- 4
Ball's Pyramid is the world's tallest volcanic stack. It has no beaches, no flat ground, and almost no vegetation. The fact that a population of large flightless insects survived there for 80 years is, by any biological reckoning, an accident.
- 5
When the Melbourne Zoo pair first arrived, keepers had no idea how to care for them. They experimented with dozens of plant species before discovering the animals thrived on fresh bramble — a plant not native to Australia and not found anywhere near their original habitat.