Besides looking amazing, this remnant of a shield volcano is home to the world's rarest insect.
Ball's Pyramid, which thrusts upward 1,843 feet out of the South Pacific, was thought to have no life until 2001, when a group of scientists made a surprising discovery.
The Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) had not been seen alive in over 70 years. Known as "land lobsters" or "walking sausages," the six-inch long insects were once common on the neighboring Lord Howe Island, but were assumed to have been eaten into extinction by invasive black rats.
But, the scientists visiting in 2001 found a bush with a colony of Lord Howe Island stick insects living under it, a hundred feet up an otherwise entirely infertile rock.
Somehow a few of the wingless insects escaped and managed, by means still unknown, to travel the 14 miles of open ocean, land on Ball's Pyramid, and survive there.
Just 27 of the insects have been found on the rocky spire, making it the rarest insect in the world except for that one talking cockroach in Pinocchio.
They are currently being bred in captivity with great success.
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| Ain't it pretty? |
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