The Tree Lobster: Back From 80 Years of Extinction

Declared extinct for 80 years, the Lord Howe Island stick insect, known as the tree lobster, secretly clung to survival on a barren sea stack in the Pacific. This episode unpacks one of the most remarkable survival stories in modern biology, from the hand-sized armored insect's bizarre life cycle to the daring night climb that rediscovered it.The discussion traces the sudden ecological collapse triggered when black rats escaped a shipwreck in 1918 and wiped the species off Lord Howe Island in just two years. It then follows the perilous expedition up Ball's Pyramid that found 24 surviving individuals, the global captive breeding network that grew them into thousands, and the genetic discoveries that explain how they endured against all odds.Why the insect formed pair bonds yet could also reproduce by cloningHow evolutionary naivete left native species defenseless against ratsThe fresh droppings under a single shrub that cracked the mysteryThe 2017 DNA study confirming the species and its redundant hexaploid genomeRat eradication and the staged reintroduction now underway on Blackburn Island