1025
Stick Insect
(aussie.zone)
Text Transcription
A series of Tweets, each a reply to the previous.
- ABC News @ABC: Scientists have discovered a giant new species of stick insect in Australia, which is over 15 inches long and researchers say may be the heaviest insect in the country. [With a picture of a brown stick insect among some green leaves.]
- mary @theoceanblooms: can I ask a question: how does something like this go undiscovered until now
- soul nate @MNateShyamalan: Entomologist here ๐โโ๏ธ๐ค๐ Great question! It may seem surprising that the scientific community could miss an entire bug species after all this time, especially when it's THIS big. The answer might surprise you more ๐ Let's dive in ๐๐งต (1/?)
- soul nate @MNateShyamalan: he look like stick (2/2)
I wish there was some kind of "Unitendified species discovered! +5 achievement points" thing in real life. As it is, unless the correct people pick it up, odds are nobody would know or care if it's a known species.
Do you take the time to carefully identify and classify every bug you come across? I don't have the skills for it, nor frankly the enthusiasm to spend time acquiring and applying them, and I'm confident that applies to most people.
this is why we have inaturalist, whenever you see a weird animals or plant or whatever, just snap a pic and upload it to inaturalist and let others figure it out.
Worst case you've just documented that the Common Shitass is now invasive to your area, best case your 5 seconds of effort is the only thing that let humanity realize we missed a whole lineage of unique beetle species.