Walking Stick Tricks!

Today we went out into Nestor park area to identify and collect some blackberry bramble for our Walking Stick insects to eat. (Mrs. B. had gloves on because bramble has big thorns!) Blackberry bramble grows wild all over Coquitlam, and it is actually an invasive species, which means it is crowding out our native plants! (So Mrs. B. doesn’t feel bad collecting it… but she doesn’t cut the branches with yummy berries on them!) Then we had our first chance to observe our little pets CLOSE UP!  Walking Stick insects belong to the Phasmid insect group.  Phasmid means “ghost” and they are called that because their camouflage helps them “disappear” into the leaves and branches!

We have four different kinds of Walking Sticks in our class: Indian Sticks (they are the very best at folding up just like a little stick!), Vietnamese Sticks (they are green and are our longest ones), Pink Winged Sticks (they can fly short distances), and brown Thorny Sticks (a little scary to look at, but it’s fun to watch the big females give the little males “piggy back rides”).

We learned a little Stick Anatomy“… like all insects they have 3 body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen.  We were careful in our drawings to show that the legs (and wings) all attach to the thorax.  We learned that the special mouthparts are called “mandibles” and that they chew from side to side, not up and down like we do!  The abdomen holds all the organs… or “guts” !  The female Thorny Sticks have a long pointed “tail” that looks like a stinger… but it’s really an “ovipositor“, a special part that helps them dig a hole in the ground to lay their eggs.

 

Observing our Walking Sticks from Nora Boekhout on Vimeo.

“Where did you get them?” asked the class and Mrs. Boekhout answered, I breed them! You will get the chance to see babies at school too!”  It’s going to be a great year for SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS!

Which Walking Stick did YOU like the best?
Go to our SURVEY below!!!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KP9MLHN 

 

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