Water stick insect
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The water stick insect sometimes flies out of the water on fine days.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Water stick insect
- Scientific name
- Ranatra chinensis
- Japanese name
- ミズカマキリ
- Group
- Insects
- Class
- Insecta
- Order
- Hemiptera
- Family
- Nepidae
- Genus
- Ranatra
A true bug that lives in rivers and ponds, in fairly deep water thick with water plants.
It breathes through a tube called a breathing siphon. Even its eggs have breathing tubes, so they can breathe under water.
With front legs made for grabbing prey, it catches small fish, tadpoles and more, and sucks their body fluids.
How the Water stick insect lives
From spring to summer, females lay eggs on plants and other material floating on the water. The young molt repeatedly and become adults by around early autumn. It spends the winter as an adult.
国土交通省 太田川河川事務所Basic data
- Size
- 40–45 mm
- Diet
- Small fish, tadpoles, terrestrial insects and other prey
- Range
- Hokkaido to Okinawa, the Korean Peninsula, northern mainland China and Taiwan
Where the Water stick insect has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 国土交通省 太田川河川事務所 — 太田川生物誌 ミズカマキリChecked: 2026-11-03
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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