We've seen these little guys in the past - not often. This fellow is on the inside of our screened porch, and we took these photos this morning. It is a bit larger than one inch. Note the striped appearance of its legs. The front two legs are held straight out usually, and are toothed like a praying mantis' - I hope that is visible. He has a strange little head. He can fly - we were holding him the other day and he astonished us by just hovering slowly up into the air! I have searched everything I could find on stick-like insects, but he doesn't match any photos I can find. Thank you in advance for giving a name to our little friend!
CLOSED: Unidentified stick insect
This is a very specialized type of assassin bug (family Reduviidae) known as a thread-legged bug - see http://www.pbase.com/tmurray74/image/70187356 for an example.
Thank you so much! Are you an entomologist? The only reason I ask is that years ago (and on another computer that died spectacularly with a lot of info on it) I sent a photo of one of these to the Smithsonian Institution, and a scientist there responded with this name - NOW I remember!
So an assassin bug is a predator. Is it related to walking sticks, or to the praying mantis? Is this as large as they get?
They are only distantly related - Assassin bugs are in the order Hemiptera (suborder Heteroptera), stick insects are in the order Phasmida (some authorities prefer Phasmatodea), and mantids are in the order Mantodea. see http://www.entnemdept.ufl.edu/choate/insect_orders.htm for a listing of insect orders.
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