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Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides for 80 Years
- oska 11y agoWingsuit flyby of Ball's Pyramid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqQrWWpcT0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqQrWWpcT0I
- abraae 11y agoThis story resonates with me. Here in New Zealand, we have many native species of birds, insects, frogs, lizards and the like that thrived when our islands were cut off from the rest of the planet, but that have become extinct, or are in imminent danger of being so due to introduced predators such as rats, stoats, hedgehogs, ferrets, cats etc. etc. It leads to the bizarre situation that conservation here is largely about killing things.
- djsumdog 11y agoI lived in Wellington for about three years. NZ is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is sad how many of the birds are threatened or endangered because of invasive species. NZ customs is pretty diligent about preventing harmful things from coming into the country thankfully.
- cfontes 11y agoI still have a bit of sadness when I get to NZ and remember we humans killed all the Moas very early after landing there, would be so interesting to see one alive.
- BurningFrog 11y agoGive it time: http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/10248028/Expert-supports-Moa-revival-idea http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/10248028/Expert-supports-...
- SapphireSun 11y agoIt's the same in the Galapagos islands too. I wonder how it is that rats are so fierce that they destroy everything they touch...
- Sven7 11y agoWe are currently studying Facebook and Wall Street to answer that.
- abraae 11y agoRats are terrible all right, though stoats are worse. There has been some success with new locally developed trap technologies. These ones use a CO2 cylinder to strike the rats or stoats, then reset themselves automatically. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1402/S00802/unprecedented-0-pest-survival-rate-in-doc-rat-control-trial.htm http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1402/S00802/unprecedented-0.... Much better if you're a city boy who doesn't really like dealing with traps and dead animals too much. We use a bigger version to catch possums. Its hard to tell how many we catch though, as the feral pigs like to carry off and eat the dead ones. Its really a fascinating logistical problem trying to eradicate a broad spectrum of pests.
- Xunxi 11y agoNeat product, well thought out internal engineering but pretty pricey for domestic use. http://www.goodnature.co.nz/products/rat-stoat/ http://www.goodnature.co.nz/products/rat-stoat/
- aerique 11y agoThat's basically what rats do. I've got pet rats and they're cute and intelligent, but they're rodents optimized for breeding. That can breed so fast it isn't even funny and they destroy everything with their teeth to either eat it or build nests from the bits and pieces or just to test it out with their teeth.
- kale 11y agoRats are crazy awesome. They're not mice or hamsters or gerbils. They are so much more intelligent and can have a personality. And I'm convinced that hamster personality is a scale of how likely it is to bite you That being said, wild rats are very destructive because of their hardiness and intelligence. Raccoons may be the top animal for intelligence in urban environments, but they can't match rats for their destructive potential.
- teekert 11y agoIt also leads to the bizarre situation that local biodiversity may increase while global biodiversity decreases.
- journeeman 11y agoHow so?
- nroets 11y agoLet's say the tree lobster on Lord Howe is replaced by rats and cats. Then Lord Howe lost one specie and gained 2, for a net gain of one specie. So local biodiversity increased. The planet lost one specie, so global biodiversity decreased.
- xanthopan 11y agoI'm sure Lord Howe lost much more than just one species of tree lobster.
- hampizza 11y agoYou're right. go down to page 26 of this pdf: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/threatenedspecies/TS20151204.pdf http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/threatenedspecie... Makes for scary reading!
- yareally 11y agoThat assumes nothing else in the ecosystem was dependent on the lost species.
- xenihn 11y agoYou think the rats won't continue to displace other species? And what happens to the rats when there's nothing left to displace? And then what happens to the cats?
- magicmu 11y agoIn New Zealand, isn't there also a huge insect called the Weta? I've never been to your beautiful homeland, but I've heard tales. I wonder what exactly differentiates these "tree lobsters" from Weta.
- alistairSH 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weta Weta are a bit like large, nocturnal crickets. There are more than one variety, but you're probably thinking of the giant variety. We get a relative of them here in the US, usually called cave crickets or camel crickets (here in VA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhaphidophoridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhaphidophoridae
- bovermyer 11y agoCamel crickets can go directly to hell. They loved our basement when my family was living in Virginia and just about gave me a heart attack every time I went down there.
- rottyguy 11y agoLove your country when I was there 2yrs ago but must admit I thought the policies to inventory everything at the airport (I've never had my shoes checked for soil/mud before) was a losing proposition. It struck me that the prevailing thought was that NZ was so fragile that anything foreign could tip the scales and cause catastrophic consequences (eg. for those old enough to remember the Boy in a Plastic Bubble). Which might happen but life evolves... (which also happens)
- WD-42 11y agoDid you read the article? Yes, ecosystems can be fragile. New Zealand has (rightfully) decided to protect theirs, even if it means a slight inconvenience at the airport.
- rottyguy 11y agoOf course they have a right to do whatever, but I'm just saying it seems like a losing strategy. Bugs and Birds get blown off course, rats sneak on ships, etc. all the time. Just saying it seems like an impossible task to police this...
- abraae 11y agoCertainly an immensely challenging task, but hopefully not impossible. We have hardly begun to apply new technology to the problem - drones, new lures, mesh networks, low cost cameras. Also we've stopped those pesky Victorians from introducing new species. Its a good thing they never introduced wildcats to control the stoats, weasels and ferrets - which they introduced to control the rabbits - which they introduced to give them something to shoot at on quiet Sunday afternnons.
- zenbane 11y agoSAY NO TO DIDDYMO
- mylons 11y agoyou forgot to mention humans.
- reustle 11y agoThis needs a (2012) in the title
- nothis 11y ago>Updated January 18, 20161:39 PM ET >Published February 29, 201210:10 AM ET I remember reading the article in 2012. I wonder what the update was? I only skimmed, is it mentioned anywhere?
- ekianjo 11y agoDoes not look like there's anything much new...
- yohoho22 11y agoIt looks like they just pushed some of the photos further forward in the text and corrected a small omission ("give it a man who was very familiar" to "give it to a man..."). Here's the most recent Wayback Machine snapshot, for comparison: https://web.archive.org/web/20160106214937/http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years https://web.archive.org/web/20160106214937/http://www.npr.or...
- zwetan 11y agosame I need something like a web diff
- leni536 11y agoYou can use the wayback machine to get old versions and diff the two raw html files (little bit dirty, but it works). Only found changes in the wording of the "description" and "og:description" meta tags. <meta name="description" content="The insect is so large — as big as a human hand — it's been dubbed a "tree lobster." [-It was thought to be-]{+Presumed+} extinct,[-but-] some enterprising ento mologists [-scoured-]{+found them on+} a barren hunk of rock in the middle of the [-ocean and found surviving Lord Howe Island stick insects."-]{+ocean."+} /> Edit: Is there a way to get the raw html from archive.org without the rewritten links? It pollutes the diff badly.
- michaelcampbell 11y agoThose things scare the bejeezus out of me (irrationally, I'll grant), but these stories give me hope, if at least a little.
- meagain20000 11y agoI wonder if you are also scared of lobsters. Now tarantulas, that is an animal I wouldn't touch with a ten feet poll.
- koide 11y agoA roommate had a pet tarantula. It was fun and enlightening to play with. It was a non venomous variety, of course.
- michaelcampbell 11y agoNo, it's mainly insects that wig me out. Tarantulas... not so much, but I'm not keen on spiders big enough that I can feel their weight. In the house if a spider is found, I generally try to save it and put it outside.
- zipwitch 11y agoUnder no circumstances should you search for videos of coconut crabs.
- michaelcampbell 11y agoI know of them... I think I know where the Alien "facehugger" idea came from. =\
- clarkmoody 11y agoMultiple previous discussions on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Six-Legged%20Giant%20Finds%20Secret%20Hideaway,%20Hides%20for%2080%20Years&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Six-Legged%20Giant%20Finds%20S...
- vortico 11y agoIt's interesting how this story has a true purpose, to convince the residents of Lord Howe to allow the insects to be released on their land by the pressure of the article's readers. Ball's Pyramid itself is perhaps even more fascinating to me. It looks like a good place for a wizard to live...
- niels_olson 11y agoDon't pitch the bugs. Pitch their shells. As buttons or jewelry.
- fabulist 11y agoPersonally I thought the detail about them forming pair bonds and cuddling was the most adorable thing I had ever heard about a bug. I'd save that species.
- cconcepts 11y agoIf only everything on HN had a wingsuit flyby
- viraptor 11y agoWingsuit flyby of spacex landing...
- tomphoolery 11y agowingsuit flyby of Heartbleed disclosure...
- dang 11y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10928715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10928715 and marked it off-topic.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- travis_brooks 11y agoDid a search to see what happened with the stick bugs and discovered the population is now large enough they're in zoos in San Diego, Toronto, and Bristol: http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/01/13/16/52/revived-aus-stick-insect-takes-on-world http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/01/13/16/52/revived-au...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- FuckOffNeemo 11y agoThat first comment on the site.
- gherkin0 11y agoAre they ever going to go back to the island and collect more specimens for breeding (and perhaps release some captive-bread individuals to replace them)? Even though that population was probably extremely inbred there's probably still some genetic diversity there that wasn't represented in to two wild specimens they managed to breed.
- mojoe 11y agoHaving such a genetically homogeneous population would make me nervous about disease potentially wiping them all out. Hopefully they can keep many breeding pairs in multiple locations around the world to prevent this.
- eddiegroves 11y agoAll those eggs from one breeding pair, do insects not need gene diversity for the population to succeed?
- mojoe 11y agoIt's possible to successfully breed inbred insects like this, because eventually you can select out all the ones with recessive gene problems (you can get lots of generations quickly with insects). The big issue is that such a homogeneous population is much more susceptible to disease -- a virus or bacteria that can kill one can probably kill them all.
- Keyframe 11y agoI thought, in my ignorance, that it would be prudent to go after a few more specimens on the rock after they got breeding going on in the zoo?
- sohkamyung 11y agoThe story of the Lord Howe Island stick insect is nicely told in this award winning short animation, "Sticky" [1]. There is also a book out now on the insects [2]. [1] https://vimeo.com/76647062 https://vimeo.com/76647062 [2] http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/7226.htm http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/7226.htm
- stuart78 11y agoThat video. I'm traumatized, yet I can't look away.
- brianclements 11y agoReminds me of a Radiolab episode[1] about a similar effort to bring back a specific species of tortoise in the Galapagos islands. The offending infringing species there where goats. What was really interesting was the method used for the eradication program.[2] [1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/brink/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/brink/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y agoWoa. It's a Rock Lobster! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZy6-fMCw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZy6-fMCw4
- trusche 11y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179292
- ed_blackburn 11y agoHow do they propose to rid Howe Island of rats?
- ceejayoz 11y agoPoison, looks like. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130729-rats-islands-invasive-species-animals-environment/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130729-rats-...
- cmpb 11y agoI'm a southern Louisiana (US "Deep South") native. Here, and in other areas of the south (and elsewhere in the world), we have similarly large "cicadas", which are basically giant crickets. They hatch once every 13 years (shorter than most other cicadas, which hatch every 17 years) [1]. Though the hatches produce huge numbers (sometimes causing areas of road to be literally covered and obscured), and can sometimes be a nuisance because of their sound, they play a very integral role in the ecological cycle and contribute to a very diverse system of plants and animals which many people around here take great pride in. I hope that the residents of Lord Howe Island can learn to live with some new friends. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada
- alistairSH 11y agoThose aren't limited to the deep south. We have several broods here in VA. As a kid, those big brood years were always amazing - so many bugs crawling around, and their shells littering the roads for weeks. Amazing stuff.
- michael_h 11y agoChocolate covered cicadas, cicada pizza, fried cicadas. The mind reels at the thought, but they're generally not bad at all. When the last giant bloom came to the southern Ohio area (~2000 or so), there were people using snow shovels to the clear the sidewalks of the carcasses. There was one particular neighborhood where the sound was so deafening, you couldn't hear the person next to you, even if they were shouting.
- vblord 11y agoI remember this posted from a year ago. I remember reading it and being grossed out that it was a giant bug and not some sort of 6 legged bear. Why that guy would ever touch that thing is beyond me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179292
- gulpahum 11y agoAre those edible? They look like a good replacement for shrimps. Nothing would guarantee their survival better than becoming a food source for humans!
- elbigbad 11y agoAs a counterpoint to your claim that being a food source for humans guarantees survival, the orange roughy is a good example. It is a fish that was discovered as tasty and then fished to 10% of its original numbers within 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_roughy#Threats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_roughy#Threats
- gulpahum 11y agoTrue, but I didn't think that we should go to Ball's Pyramid and eat them up. I was thinking about mass production. Think about chicken: there are more chickens than humans on this planet [1]. These creatures have such a great name! Nobody wants to eat crickets or worms, but who could resist a tree lobster? It is such a great marketing name! [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/global-livestock-counts http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/global-liv... Edit: you are right that being a food source for humans doesn't guarantee survival. It only happens if the food source can be mass produced.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoOnce humans spread and travel became commonplace, its inevitable that 'invasive species' should become a worldwide problem. It only has to happen once; you can't ever be careful enough to avoid that. And the most invasive species of all, which erases whole ecosystems and changes everything including the water, soil and weather, is of course, us.
- theophrastus 11y agoThe old accepted view was that terrestrial arthropods are limited in size by their system of respiration which amounts to exoskeletal pores (spiracles) and internal airways. So terrestrial bugs can't get much bigger because of the body volume (cubic) versus passive respiratory surface (square). (we've got a forced air/blood circulation system so we can get bigger) Consequently it would be fascinating to learn how close Dryococelus australis is to that theoretical limit, or has it developed some sort of active respiratory system? (in which case, maybe it's time to start engineering insect saddles?)
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago> It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. So there are bigger insects around, and they can fly?
- dtparr 11y agoMeet the (up to 16.7cm) titan beetle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_beetle http://www.odditycentral.com/animals/bugs-the-size-of-your-hand-the-titan-beetle.html http://www.odditycentral.com/animals/bugs-the-size-of-your-h...
- logfromblammo 11y agoThe largest known living flying insect is a species of giant dobsonfly native to China. Wingspan 21cm. The largest known flying insects from the fossil record were about the size of a crow. Meganisoptera are sometimes called griffinflies, with wingspans up to 71cm, length 43cm.