In the high-altitude Australian rainforest, researchers identified a new species dubbed Acrophylla alta — and it may be the country's heaviest insect.
Professor Angus Emmott/James Cook UniversityAcrophylla alta, the giant stick insect found in the Australian rainforest.
Australia is known for having freakishly large bugs — including a tarantula so big it is known as the “bird-eating spider” — but a newly discovered species of stick insect may be one of the creepiest crawlers to be found on the continent.
The creature, dubbed Acrophylla alta, measures more than 15 inches in length and weighs about the same as a golf ball, making it Australia’s heaviest known insect. It was found in the rainforest of northern Queensland, a remote, high-altitude area that kept the insect hidden for all these years.
James Cook University researcher Angus Emmott and wildlife expert Ross Coupland detailed the discovery in a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Zootaxa.
‘Acrophylla Alta,’ Australia’s Heaviest Insect
Even among Australia’s massive insects, Acrophylla alta is a behemoth — and the reason for this, researchers say, is likely its environment.
In a statement from James Cook University, Emmott explained, “It’s a cool, wet environment where they live. Their body mass likely helps them survive the colder conditions, and that’s why they’ve developed into this large insect over millions of years.”
Notably, Acrophylla alta is not the biggest stick insect in Australia in terms of length, which only makes its denseness more remarkable.
As Emmott said, “There are longer stick insects out there, but they’re fairly light bodied. From what we know to date, this is Australia’s heaviest insect.”
Those environmental conditions also helped to hide the insect from scientists’ eyes until now.
“It’s restricted to a small area of high-altitude rainforest, and it lives high in the canopy,” Emmott said. “So, unless you get a cyclone or a bird bringing one down, very few people get to see them.”
To determine if this truly was a new species, Emmott and Coupland journeyed to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in Queensland to find a specimen for themselves. They had seen a photograph of the insect and immediately suspected it was an unidentified species, but to verify this, they needed proof.
After multiple nights of searching, they located a female stick insect high in a tree and captured it. They fed it and kept it safe until it laid eggs, which allowed them to confirm that they were, in fact, dealing with a new species.
“Every species of stick insect has their own distinct egg style,” Emmott said. “They’ve all got different surfaces and different textures and pitting, and they can be different shapes. Even the caps on them are all very unique.”
Two females of the species have since been found, but no males have been located yet due to their elusive nature.
“I think you could spend a long time looking for one and not find one,” Emmott told the Australian Broadcasting Company.
This discovery has also reignited conversations about forest conservation and its importance for the field of science.
Forest Conversation And Future Species Discoveries
Discovering Acrophylla alta highlighted how little is still known about Earth’s rainforests. If such a large species of insect could remain hidden until now, what else might be waiting out there?
“Canopies are not well studied, so there’s a chance there are many more species in the canopy than we can even imagine,” said Peter Valentine, a former chair of the Wet Tropics Management Authority. “The other element of this is the more we can learn, the better hope there is that we’ll be able to protect these marvelous natural places.”
Professor Angus Emmott/James Cook UniversityThe stick insect measured 15.75 inches and weighed around 1.5 ounces.
As the new study illustrates, scientists still don’t even know every species out there. That, as Emmott said, could be a very real concern:
“The scary thing is we may be losing species before we even know they exist.”
After learning about the previously unknown stick insect that was just identified in Australia, read about the Asian giant hornet. Then, meet the damselfly, your new favorite insect.
