A Surprising Diversity of Eggs

Minnesotastan posted this image and had people try to guess what these things are, but you can easily click through to Instagram to find out. They are not seashells, seeds, or hand-carved beads. They are phasmid eggs, from various species of insects we know as stick insects or walking sticks. There are hundreds of species, and their eggs are all different. Some of them have a knob on top, which ants see to be seeds. Ants will take the "seed" into their nest, and can feed the knob to their own larvae while leaving the eggs just fine. When the stick insect emerges, it can escape the ants nest safely because it looks like an ant. That's three stages of mimicry: eggs that look like seeds, larva that look like ants, and adults that look like sticks.

The collection in the image is an artwork by Levon Biss, and is for sale. He says some of the eggs are as small as three millimeters long! However, that would make the "totem pole" in the middle rather large for an insect egg. Still, some walking sticks can grow to 25 inches long.