Could this thing crawling up my leg kill me?

So, there I was, sitting at the campfire enjoying my adult beverage and listening to the Florida evening treefrogs, when I noticed our dog Oscar begin to shake his head and flop his ears. He jumped up and began pacing, trying to shake something off his nose it seemed, so I shined my headlamp back towards him to see what it was. That’s when I felt something crawling up my leg.

Something big.

I levitated out of my chair and may have screamed like a small child when I saw this 6-inch-long creature crawling up the bottom third of my leg:

Photo by Heather Wall

Right about then is when I thought of my next Natural Wonders newsletter question:

Could this thing crawling up my leg kill me?

Honestly, when it/they were crawling up my leg, one of the images that flew through my mind was those coffee-drinking aliens from Men In Black:

In the movie they were friendly. But they also weren’t crawling up my leg in the dark.

After flailing around a bit while screaming and losing the headlamp in the process, I eventually rediscovered this insect on the ground near the fire. It turns out it’s a walking stick insect, which are cool-looking insects with bodies and legs that look exactly like stems and branches, making them very hard to see when they’re camouflaged in a tree.

Photo from The Wild Robot

The one I found was a two-striped walking stick, which I discovered are the most common type of stick bug found in Florida and among the largest insects in the continental U.S. Usually they are brown with brown stripes, but only in the Ocala National Forest will you find these black and white versions.

And, it turns out, it actually is dangerous. To protect itself, it can squirt a caustic liquid up to a foot away in a very focused stream. Folks who have been sprayed say it feels like having molten lead poured into your eye. It can affect your eyesight for a week or more.

Of course, we found this out after taking copious close-ups from just inches away.

And what’s with the other walking stick hitching a ride on its back? It turns out that’s the male. He’s always about a third of the size of the female and spends much of his life riding around on her back. Separating them will often kill them. The females have been observed eating oaks and crepe myrtles, though they don’t eat so much that they’re considered pests. Weirdly, the males have not been observed eating. Only 1 in every 1,000 walking sticks is male.

Other names for walking sticks are devil rider, prairie alligator, devil’s darning needle, witch’s horse, and musk mare. Despite these negative-sounding names, the walking stick is a beneficial insect and not dangerous unless provoked. So, the answer to my burning question is: No, this creature would not kill me, but it could hurt like the dickens. I decided I was done for the night with the campfire.

Detritus

• Two-striped Walking stick

• The walking stick – bizarre and dangerous

• Video of two-striped walking stick

• Watch one spray a stupid guy harassing it

• Largest walking stick in the world

• Lots of different versions of walking sticks

• Love walking sticks and want the T-shirt to prove it?

If you liked this post, please share using the button below - I’d love to share ideas with new subscribers:

Have you encountered walking stick insects? Other weird natural phenomena? Random thoughts? Comment below: