“The Insect That Was Declared Extinct… Then They Found 24 Alive”

For nearly 80 years, the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect was considered extinct.

Then, in one of the most extraordinary rediscoveries in natural history, scientists and climbers found a tiny surviving population clinging to a single shrub on the impossible cliffs of Ball’s Pyramid—a remote volcanic sea stack rising from the Pacific Ocean.

Once common on Lord Howe Island, these remarkable insects disappeared after invasive rats arrived following the wreck of the SS Makambo in 1918.

By the 1960s, the species was considered gone forever.

But high above the ocean, on a rock so hostile that almost nothing could survive there, a handful of these insects had somehow endured.

In 2001, researchers discovered 24 living individuals.

Just 24.

In 2003, two breeding pairs were brought into captivity, and from those four insects, conservation programs began rebuilding the population.

Today, the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect represents one of nature’s most remarkable survival stories—and conservation efforts are working toward the possibility of returning this species to its ancestral home.

This is the story of an insect that disappeared from the world… without actually disappearing.

Sometimes extinction isn’t the end.

Sometimes, somewhere in the darkness, something is still holding on.

🎬 Watch until the end for the full story of one of the most extraordinary species rediscoveries ever documented.