Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Hand Me Down My Walking Stick

I always enjoy seeing walking sticks--that is, sticks that walk, not sticks to assist people walking. These insects are as difficult to write about as they are to photograph. It's not that they won't hold still--they are very obliging, as their frozen poses make them resemble twigs even more. It's just that they are so long, and so inanimate--how can you capture their strangeness in a photograph?

I'd hoped to clarify what I was talking about with a scientific name, but the walking sticks are members of the orthopteroid orders, and Internet taxonomic schemas are inconsistent in naming the stick insects. I'm going to follow Willi Hennig (1981), my grad school hero, in calling them phasmids.

4 comments:

Reya Mellicker said...

You utterly captured the phasmid's strangeness. That first pic is amazing. Thank you.

Rebecca Clayton said...

I'm glad you could see it!

Rick Lee said...

Wow, cool shots. I thought about you all when I went over Droop Mountain yesterday.

Larry said...

Nice photos, and I liked the post title. It brought to mind a song Norman Blake recorded years ago which I assume had folk origins.