New Sticks

In the past couple of months, we've moved house, let the grasshoppers go and welcomed some new additions to the family.

With the grasshoppers reaching the end of their season, we released the remaining ones and had a look through the dirt and grass at the bottom of the cage to see if there were any eggs. We weren't completely sure what we were looking for, and we didn't find anything obvious.

Spinelar, the tough old girl, is still going. We bought her as a juvenile, at least a couple of months old, in December 2012, so she's at least 20 months old now. We were a bit worried about the first batch of eggs because at the old house, it got really *really* hot in the summer. Eggs that have been fertilised can start hatching after a few months. When we had no hatchlings by February or so, we were worried that the eggs had been cooked by the extreme heat we had over summer. We kept an eye on them and kept watering them anyway.

Then last Tuesday, 27 May, there was a little smudge sitting on the side of the container. I nearly missed it because I wasn't looking for it or expecting it. It was our first hatchling from the eggs laid by Spinelar.

Mother and child

 A second one hatched this morning. Over the last eight months or so, Spinelar has laid hundreds of eggs. This could get interesting. It's possible that there are cooked eggs in there, and the ones hatching now are ones that were laid later on. Hopefully, some of the fertilised eggs have survived. We'll have to wait to know for sure. If we see some of the nymphs mature into males, then we know that the earlier eggs, the fertilised ones, survived. If it's all females, it would seem likely that the earlier eggs didn't survive because spiny leaf insect eggs don't need to be fertilised by a male, but unfertilised eggs will only produce females.