Walking Stick Insect

The lifespan of a stick insect can be well over a year, but they are prolific and extremely easy to care for. Keep them in an old fish tank with fine netting over the top, and cover the floor in clean newsprint.You need a glass jar full of water, into which you place as many leafy twigs of privet as will fit, so that there are no gaps to let an insect get to the water and drown.

Start off with half a dozen insects and place them on the privet leaves. Some people say you can but honestly it is wiser not to handle stick insects for they are very fragile: pick up babies with as oft paintbrush. Stick insects should be kept at room temperature but do watch that they do not become damp or you could lose them. They will defecate small, shriveled droppings; they will also lay great loads of eggs, one at a time. They are the same co lour as the droppings so you have to look carefully, but they are hard and round with a little lid at one end. The best thing is to change the privet whenever most of the leaves have been eaten, being careful that the insects climb onto the new leaves first or you might inadvertently throw them out

When you have done that,pick up all the eggs and put them into an open match-box tray in the corner of the cage and then get rid of the droppings. Incidentally, you will not come across any male stick insects - not of this species, anyway - they are all female. After some months the egg swill hatch out and newly hatched babies are very thirsty so you will need a shallow dish with a scrap of water; an upturned lid of some sort usually works. After this first drink they do not take water again until just before they die. Newly hatched babies look like a1 cm (0.4 in) long piece of thread with legs. They shed their skins periodically, getting bigger each time until they are adult, and when they are about nine months old they start to lay eggs themselves.You can feed them to animals at any age depending on the size of the animal.