These quite remarkable looking animals are one of many species of true LEAF INSECTS, which very closely resemble leaves making them masters of camouflage in the trees in which they live!  This particular species originally would have come from Thailand but these animals, like all of the animals in my collection, were bred in captivity in the UK. 

One of my females is on the top in the two pictures below with a male directly below her.  Females are considerably larger than males and unable to fly, whereas the males has fully developed wings and are able to fly quite gracefully.

Males and females appear even more different when viewed close up, with the male (below) having very long feathery antennae.  This picture is of a different male than the one pictured above, as you can see he has a nice reddish-brown colouration on some parts of his legs.

Females have really tiny antennae compared to the males and also much larger 'leafy' projections on their front legs!

I have had excellent success in breeding this species and I would have to say that the babies (nymphs) are some of the prettiest of all the species I keep!  What is amazing about the babies is their colour on hatching, quite unlike the adult colouration as you can see below!

They lose this fabulous red colouration as soon as they moult for the first time to become green, and as they grow they moult regularly until adult size is reached, which can be as quickly as four to five months in my experience with the species! 

The picture above shows a very small group of the nymphs I hatched during the summer of 2008, and as you can see some of them have already taken on their green colouration even if their body shape has not yet changed into that of the adults as seen at the top of the page!