Giant Spiny Leaf Insect (Heteropteryx dilatata)

Giant Spiny Leaf Insect (Heteropteryx dilatata)_3
Suppose you’re in insect. Your eggs need to be kept under 25 C to hatch, but you don’t want to bother with actually moving them out of the sun or finding a good home for them. What do you?

If you’re a giant spiny lead insect, you’ll coat your eggs in lipids and fling them all over the forest to ants to eat. They’ll find the eggs, carry them to their nest, eat the outer layer and then ditch them in their trash pile … which is kept under 25 C. Then your babies will hatch out, think “WFT? Where am I?”, find their way out and scamper up the nearest tree.

You may not think she’s the greatest mother, but as you can see, she’s punk and doesn’t care about your opinion.