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 the Philippines but these animals, like all of the animals in my collection, were bred in captivity in the UK. 

The animal pictured above is a mature female.  Females are considerably larger than males and unable to fly, whereas males have well-developed wings and are able to fly quite gracefully. This is a mature male:

You can see from the pictures above that males and female are very different to each other.  As well as the size and shape differences females have really tiny antennae compared to the males and also much larger 'leafy' projections on their front legs!   The pictures below are of females just before they moult for the final time to reach their adult size:

You can see from these pictures just how detailed and leaf-like their bodies are, even down to having browned edges like many leaves in the trees do!  They truly are masters of disguise and sometimes when I am preparing to take them out with me to schools or other events I genuinely struggle to find them amongst all the leaves in their enclosure!

In the past I have had good success in breeding leaf insects and I would have to say that the babies (nymphs) are some of the prettiest of all the insect 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 one summer, 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!