Stick insects belong, together with walking leaves, to the phasmatodea. For many years, people have been busy describing the stick insect species. This is mainly done by the people of the Phasmid Study Group, also known as PSG. They place these species after careful research in the psg-list. Stick and leaf insects are remarkable animals because most of them are very well camouflaged : like psg 1,
Carausius morosus. Others are brightly colored and very active. Phasmids are nocturnal herbivores, meaning they only eat plants and they do that at night. The most popular foodplants are : bramble, ivy and privet. Before you put your animals in a terarium, butterfly cage or faunabox you should first check if you can keep them. The cage must be minimum 3 times higher than the length of the mature animal, and 2 times wider. Otherwise, the insects won't be able to molt. And that's necessary, because stick and leaf insects do this to grow. The males of stick and leaf insects are faster mature and smaller than the females. Room temperature is warm enough for most phasmids even though most of them are found in tropical areas around the equator and even in southern Europe.
