by Prague (AP) – The Prague Zoo has strained internationally to ensure the survival of a rare insect that had died out for more than 80 years.
The zoo is one of the six institutions around the world that were able to create living conditions for the largest types of airless insects, the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect, which grows up to 15 centimeters (5.9 inches). They are exhibited, a rare opportunity that only London and San Diego offer.
The insect, also known as Lord Howe Island Phasmid, comes from a remote archipelago in the Tasman Sea off Australia.
The uninhabited archipelago was discovered in 1778. Rats who came with a ship off the coast in 1918 seemed to wipe out the insect’s population.
In the 1960s, mountain climbers found signs of insects on a rocky island 23 kilometers off the Lord Howe coast. In 2001 it was confirmed that copies survived there. Two couples were brought to Australia for breeding, a step that is necessary for the critically endangered species.
“They had to make enormous efforts to survive for 100 years in such a difficult place as the balls as the balls, and now need such a sensitive care to live in captivity,” said Vojtěch Vít, an experienced goalkeeper in the Prague Zoo, said on Tuesday.
At the entrance, the zoo had to create an air-conditioned building with disinfectant equipment for the keeper to protect the insects that are susceptible to bacterial and virus infections and to maintain the consent of the Australian authorities for breeding.
The goal of the breeding program is to return the insect to its natural environment on Lord Howe Island after the rats were exterminated there in 2019.
