Wait a second that wasn't Emily in yesterday's video. What's going on?
April Fool's guys. This is my sister, Bethany.
Bethany helps us out at all of our reptile and exotic pet Expos
but
I get confused for Emily all the time!
So we couldn't resist playing a little April Fool's Day joke since today's video is so close to April Fool's Day.
I think we tricked a few of you. I don't know.
Hopefully.
Today though, we wanted to explain ourselves and we're going to be talking about how to take care of walking sticks.
Stick bugs otherwise known as stick insects or walking sticks are a really easy animal or invertebrate to take care of in captivity.
There's actually over 3,000 different species of walking sticks
the largest of which is called the "Chan's mega stick", which is an awesome name.
Yeah
And it grows to about 22 inches long with its legs extended.
However, most that are kept in captivity are about 3 to 4 inches as adults
and like praying mantises the males are actually smaller than the females.
We're pretty sure that the walking stick we have is the Western short horn species, but we're not positive
so if there are any walking stick gurus watching and you see it's a different species, let us know,
but we're pretty sure this is the Western short-horned walking stick.
Let's start with enclosure setup.
The height of the enclosure should be around 3 times the length of the walking stick and the width should be about 2 times their length.
And it doesn't really matter if you use glass or plastic, as long as you have a mesh top
so that they can grip on to it when they shed, because they shed hanging upside down.
To also assist in shedding they need pretty high humidity
so I also recommend not using a completely mesh or screen enclosure because all your humidity is gonna go right through that screen.
It's best to have something with sides made of plastic or glass to hold in that moisture.
For substrate we recommend using moss or topsoil or anything that really retains that humidity.
We also recommend adding springtails to help keep the enclosure clean by eating leftover food and feces.
Decor is as easy as adding sticks and foliage into the enclosure, you can use fake leaves
because it seems, although they're not very smart
they are smart enough to differentiate between plastic plants and real plants
so in our experience they won't try to eat plastic or fake foliage.
The foliage gives them something extra to grip onto when they're exploring in their habitat.
If you want you can add a water dish
but it's not necessary because they get most of their water
from their food. And don't be surprised
if you do have a water dish, you find them with their entire head in the water.
You see walking sticks don't breathe with their mouths
instead they have a series of spiracles running down their thorax and their abdomen and those spiracles are just small openings that lead into the
trachea which are tubes going into the insects body and
oxygen goes through the spiracle enters the tube or the trachea and that's where the oxygen is diffused into the rest of their body.
So actually you can drown or suffocate
a walking stick by inserting their thorax and abdomen into the water rather than their face.
For that reason if you do offer a water dish
it's good to have marbles or rocks in there, too
so that they don't slip and fall and then drown.
For heating you don't have to worry about adding a heat mat or a heat lamp
room temperature is fine.
As long as it remains between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unlike praying mantises the walking sticks are actually herbivorous. So feeding them is really easy.
The toughest part is just keeping their food fresh, but they'll eat a variety of leaves including oak leaves and raspberry leaves.
They'll also eat romaine lettuce
If you're collecting leaves from the outdoors though to feed them with it's best to make sure you're collecting from a site
that doesn't use any pesticides and make sure you rinse them off beforehand, too.
If you're feeding oak leaves specifically red oaks tend to taste bitter
I'm pretty sure because I know that acorns of red oaks taste bitter compared to white Oaks.
So instead you want to feed the leaves of white oaks now to tell them apart you just look at the leaves.
Red oaks have sharp points to the end of their leaves kind of like the points of flames which are red, right?
That's how I remember it and white oak leaves have roundes tips to the leaves
kind of like the soft billowy snow, just white. That's how I learned it in college anyway.
However, feeding romaine is just as good, they'll eat that just fine
Some people put the leaves at the bottom of the enclosure
but we recommend hanging it from the top
then it's more like the trees that they encounter normally what works really well is laying a magnet on top of the screen lid so
that you can easily attach lettuce using a metal paperclip.
The most important thing is to change the leaves out regularly if they dry up or if they are just old in general
they're not gonna want to eat them and they won't be as healthy as they were originally.
So we recommend about every day if you can to change out the leaves or at least every other day.
They'll stop eating it if it's bad so you'll be able to tell based on their activity when it needs to be changed.
They only eat the green leafy parts, not the stem or the white face of the leaf
so if all you see "romaine"ing from that leaf of romaine you put in there is the white base
it's time to change it out.
Walking sticks are considered skeletonizers
Which means they eat just the leafy part in between each vein of the leaves
so if you see a skeleton of a leaf behind then it's also another sign to change it out.
Like we said earlier they get most of their water from their food. So make sure to mist the leaves daily.
It's actually best to feed them and mist those leaves at night because it's been found that walking sticks are most
active from 9 p.m. To 3 a.m. So they are nocturnal and that's when they do most of their eating
so you want that leaf to be as fresh as possible for when the walking stick is ready to eat it.
During the inactive parts of the day walking sticks will often extend their legs forward alongside their antennae to look even more like a stick.
You can handle them. However some have defense mechanisms that you might be wary of
some may bite and some have a defensive chemical spray that
causes a rash or even temporary blindness. Some even regurgitate their last meal to create a bitter liquid that deters
animals from eating them.
You're gonna lick it? Try it.
No, I'm not gonna lick it! You lick it!
I'm not gonna eat it
I'm not gonna eat it either
We won't know if it tastes bad unless you lick it
Well, I don't know if this is the liquid. It just kind of bunked its face on me
What if the bitter liquid kills me Emily?
It won't kill you. Try it!
*giggles* Are you really...?
There wasn't enought
Walking sticks are egg-layers
some will lay their eggs behind bark and some will just drop them from the branch that they're sitting in
and it will go from branch to ground.
They're eggs though are pretty unique, in that they have kind of a tasty portion of the egg which attracts ants.
The ants will pick up the egg bring it into their anthill down in the tunnels
they'll eat the tasty part off of the egg and then they discard the rest of the egg in their waste pile which has the
perfect humidity levels for the egg to hatch in and incubate in
which can take anywhere from 2 to 12 months for the eggs to hatch.
But when the babies come out
they simply walk out of the tunnels of the anthill and the ants don't care, they just let them go.
So they bring them in and they like protect the eggs until they hatch.
Believe it or not many walking sticks exhibit a behavior called parthenogenesis
which means that females can breed without the existence of a male. So basically they're independent women who don't need no man.
However, if there's no male involved in the breeding process, then the female can only produce female young.
So basically she's cloning herself.
Although if there is a male involved then that's how she can produce males
so there really isn't a point to have guys around is there.
heck no
The reason why it takes so long for eggs to hatch is because females will lay the eggs late summer and they will
overwinter and hatch in the spring.
When the young hatched from their eggs, they look exactly like their adult counterparts except just much smaller.
They grow the same way praying mantises and grasshoppers do it's called simple or incomplete metamorphosis
and basically they just shed their skin over and over and they about double in size with each shed.
When they first come out they're considered first instars and when they shed they become second instars
and that number just keeps going up until they become adults.
If a walking stick loses a leg
it's not a big deal because they can just gain another at their next shed
unless they're an adult in which case they won't shed anymore.
That's why it's so important to have high humidity in your walking sticks enclosure is to assist it in shedding
They're most likely to lose legs and antennae if it's too dry
So that's why misting their entire enclosure every day is essential.
Taking care of baby walking-sticks is the same as with adults
Basically just feed them regularly, make sure there's always fresh food in there, mist them regularly
so the humidity is high enough for them to shed properly
There's no cleaning involved if you have tropical soil and springtails doing the cleaning work for you
So that makes them a really easy pet
They're really interesting quick little critters and you can hold and interact with them.
But hopefully today's video taught you a little bit about walking sticks.
Thank you again, Bethany for joining me
in today's April Fool's Day trick/Walking stick video
and thank you to all the patreon supporters of course
for backing this channel, and we'll see you next time
What's the difference between Mantid and mantas?
Same thing.
This is what their poop looks like
High-five
He's crawling up your hair.
Yeah
Come here, friend!
We're pretty sure that the species we have here is the Western short-horned mantis
But if anyone knows differently, like if you're a mantis- mantis... walking stick.
Pretty certain this is the Western short horned man-... mantis...
so, like, um- aah...
If you want you can add a wourder dish-
Wha...
You see walking sticks don't bre- ... No that is what I meant to say too...
for room teacher- ooh
For room teacher
aaaaah...
Does it cover? I dont really know
Maybe it does. We'll just leave it out.
maybe spittbubble-ish
Thank you!
See that's why you should be up here
Yeah
Laughing at us from afar
Did I just lick this ones urine?!
Okay, so I just licked its vomit. It's fine. Yeah, that's fine.
Honestly, this isn't the worst thing that Ive done for you