Ball’s Pyramid is fairly amazing at first glance. However it wasn’t
until 2001 on a much closer inspection of the island, that scientists
realized just how amazing the island, and its inhabits, really were
The remnants of a once massive volcano,
Ball’s Pyramid juts 1,843 feet out of the Pacific ocean. Discovered in
1788, the barren, rocky spire was thought to be devoid of life until
2001 when a group of scientists discovered what may be the world’s
rarest insect.
The Lord Howe Island stick insect
(Dryococelus australis) had not been seen alive in over 70 years. Known
as “land lobsters” or “walking sausages,” the six inch long insects had
once been common on the neighboring Lord Howe Island, but were assumed
to have been eaten into extinction by black rats introduced when a
supply ship ran aground in 1918.
Yet in 2001 the scientists found a colony of the huge Lord Howe
Island stick insects living under a single bush, a hundred feet up the
otherwise entirely infertile rock. Somehow a few of the wingless
insects escaped and managed–by means still unknown–to traverse 23
kilometers of open ocean, land on Ball’s Pyramid, and survive there.
Just 27 of the insects have been found on the rocky spire. They are
currently being bred in captivity.
Links to Ball’s Pyramid on the Atlas and a link to the fact sheet on the Lord Howe Island stick insect.
