00:02When you think of the zoo, majestic animals like the tiger, elephant or lion probably come to mind.
00:09Or maybe you think of fluffy animals like koalas, panda bears or the sloth.
00:19Well today we're thinking a little bit differently because right here, right now, it's all about bugs, bugs, bugs.
00:27And we're not talking about any old bug off the street, this is the Lord Howe Island stick insect.
00:33Sort of a who's who in the bug world.
00:36As far as insects go, it's a very big celebrity, it has such an unlikely story.
00:42It's been through a century of struggle to survive, clinging to a volcanic rock in the middle of the ocean.
00:48This epic tale of determination and grit begins at Lord Howe Island, which sits about 370 miles off the coast
00:55of Australia.
00:56These insects lived here peacefully until 1918, when a ship crashed into the island releasing rats on the land.
01:02A couple of years later, there were no more Lord Howe Island insects left on the very island they were
01:08named after.
01:09But not to despair, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
01:12And that's what they did. A few of these creatures somehow found their way to a tiny pile of rocks
01:17not far from Lord Howe Island.
01:19Lord Howe Island stick insects were rediscovered on Ball's Pyramid, which is a tiny volcanic outcropping of rock also off
01:27the coast of Australia.
01:28And this was in 2001 when they were seen again for the first time.
01:33And that's where they were for the 80 years that people thought that they were gone, is they were living
01:38on this basically rock that is jetting out of the ocean.
01:42Typically not a place where you would find stick insects.
01:45So that's one of the other reasons the story is so incredible that they've obviously been managing to survive on
01:50this place for a long, long time.
01:52Wow, what a bunch of little troopers.
01:55But how did they get to San Diego Zoo?
01:57Well, I recently returned from Melbourne, Australia, where I visited the Melbourne Zoo.
02:01And I returned on the return flight with 300 eggs of the critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect, which
02:07was a pretty precious cargo.
02:09When the stick insects hatched, they were bright green.
02:11As they grew, they started to take on more of the brownish, dark brown coloration.
02:17From the initial group of eggs that we brought back from the Melbourne Zoo in Australia, we have 69 adults
02:22and it's about an even spread between males and females.
02:25So we're really excited to be getting eggs at this point.
02:27So with any luck, we should be seeing some new stick bug babies here at the San Diego Zoo pretty
02:33soon.
02:34And that's the whole point, to see the overall population of these critters grow.
02:38And maybe in the future, they'll get to go back to the island they were named after.
02:43Everyone working on this project hopes that the Lord Howe Island stick insect will be released to its ancestral home
02:50after more than a century.
02:52These impressive bugs have a history of defying the odds.
02:55And I think that they have a pretty good shot at making it back home.
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