Travels of a Fish Nut

I can’t remember the first time I heard about the Lord Howe Island stick insect, and I can’t say my interest has been much more than in passing. They would pique my interest when I saw them in the news, only to fade back into the vast and ever growing pile of ‘oh, interesting’. Then, at the beginning of November, I actually got to come face to face with one of these creatures and it was so incredible I decided to find out more. This is what I’ve learned… Lord Howe Island stick insects are - I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn - found on Lord Howe Island. This is a small crescent-shaped island in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. I didn’t realise until researching this piece that the island is actually inhabited. It has a population of 382 people according to the 2011 census . The Lord Howe Island stick insect ( Dryococelus australis ), or LHISI as it’s known to friends, was first described by Xavier Montrouzier in 1855 from specimens collected by the HMS Hera...

I was perusing the news over lunch today when this article caught my eye (I can't imagine why!), I had a read and my eyes began to involuntarily roll. This was another of those terrible evo-psych papers I've written about in the past , wasn’t it? After having read the paper the article is based on, and after rescuing my eyes after they fell out of my head and onto the floor from rolling so much, I regret to inform you that yes, it is. The basic set up for the research is that they have a series of photos of men and they ask people to judge the strength of the man in the photo based on the physique of his torso and rate his attractiveness. (I'll get to the 'why' later). The first thing to note is that it's all a bit of a mess. I will try and be brief with the explanation of the method as I know it's incredibly tedious to read, but it really has to be seen to be believed. They have two separate sets of photos, both taken from prior research. The f...