Stick insect Coloring Pages

Bugs That Look Just Like Tree Twigs

The Stick insect is a bug with a body as skinny and long as a tree twig.
They live on tree leaves in woods and parks. When they stay still, you cannot tell them apart from real twigs!
Copying the look of things around them like this is called camouflage.
The Stick insect in this coloring page is a type called the Japanese walkingstick, which is the one you see most often in Japan. They are about 7 to 10 centimeters long.

Let's Look at Their Body Parts

The Stick insect is an insect, so it has 6 legs, and they all grow from its thorax.
Look at the first coloring page from above and check where its legs grow from.
Its thorax is very long, so there is a big space between its front legs, middle legs, and back legs.
The Japanese walkingstick has no wings, so it cannot fly.

Stretching Front Legs to Act Like a Twig

In the second coloring page from the side, the Stick insect is stretching its front legs straight out in front of its head.
When it does this, its body looks even more like one long twig!
The long parts sticking out in front of its head are its front legs, not its antennas.
The antennas of the Japanese walkingstick are very short, so look closely at the tip of its head to find them.

Living by Eating Leaves

The Stick insect eats leaves from trees like cherry blossom trees, konara oaks, and Chinese hackberries.
They stay still on twigs and leaves during the day, and they move around to eat leaves mostly at night.
When the wind blows, they sometimes sway their bodies to act like a twig blowing in the wind.

There Are Green Ones and Brown Ones

The Japanese walkingstick can be green or brown.
Green ones look just like young twigs and leaves, and brown ones look just like dry twigs.
Both colors help them hide from enemies like birds.

Tiny Claws at the Tips of Their Legs

The Stick insect has tiny claws at the tips of its legs.
It uses these claws to hold tightly onto twigs and leaves.
In the second coloring page, all 5 leg tips line up at the same height because it is standing on a wooden board.
Walking very, very slowly also helps it pretend to be a twig.

The Best Season to Find Them

Stick insects come out of their eggs in spring and grow bigger little by little as they eat leaves.
It gets easier to find grown-ups from summer to autumn.
Look carefully at leaves on cherry trees in the park or low trees at the edge of the woods!

Green or Brown, Choose Your Favorite!

There are green and brown Stick insects, so color yours using whichever color you like best.
We recommend yellow-green for green, and light brown for brown.
It is also fun to color one page green and the second page brown!

Color the Thin Body Segment by Segment

Its body and legs are very thin, so sharpen the tip of your colored pencil before you start.
If you color the body little by little between the segments, it is easier to stay inside the lines.
Making the joints between the segments a little darker makes it look like bamboo joints and super cool!

Change the Colors a Bit at the Tips of the Legs

Color the legs the same color as the body.
If you make the knees and the tips of the legs dark brown, it will look just like a real twig!
On the second page, the front legs reaching forward have light green bases, and the tips look a little brownish.

Try Making a Hide-and-Seek Picture!

When you finish coloring, try drawing tree branches and leaves around it yourself.
If you draw branches in the same color as the Stick insect, you can make a hide-and-seek picture where you cannot tell where it is hiding!

Color the Small Head Carefully

The head is very small, so color it slowly.
Make the eyes small dark brown dots, and trace the short antennae in the same color as the body.
If you leave a single light-colored line down the middle of the body, it shows the round shape of a twig and looks so real!

Females can lay eggs all by themselves

Female Stick insect can increase their numbers by laying eggs all by themselves.
Males are very rare, and you almost never find one.
Almost every Stick insect you see is a female!

The eggs look just like plant seeds

A Stick insect egg is wrapped in a hard shell, so it looks just like a plant seed.
The female drops her eggs one by one from high up in the trees down to the ground.
The eggs spend the winter under fallen leaves, and small nymphs hatch in the spring.

Lost legs can grow back again

When a Stick insect gets caught by an enemy, it sometimes breaks off its own leg to escape.
If it is still a nymph, the missing leg will grow back when it sheds its skin to grow bigger.
The new leg is often a little shorter than the other legs.

The secret behind its Japanese name

The Japanese name for Stick insect is written as "七節" in Kanji.
This "七" (seven) does not mean exactly seven. It actually means "many"!
It is said that it got this name because its body has many joints.